Beautiful Moon
by sorcerousfang
Summary: Mizuki's your average high school girl, until a class trip to Tokyo and her endless curiosity lands her 500 years in the past, with apparent ties to a secret clan and a mysterious artifact. To make matters worse, her mini adventure plans are dug right out from under her when she can't return home...
1. The Funny Thing About Horoscopes

**Disclaimer: I don't make any money off of this. Inuyasha is owned by Rumiko Takahashi and some part of it also belongs to Sunrise TV if I'm not mistaken. I'm neither, unfortunately. Due to research and thought to authenticity, real places and names may be used in this story as well.**

**Sorcerousfang: Hey everyone. After a lot of thought, I threw out the old Beautiful Moon. No one said much about Mizuki being an obvious mary-sue, and suddenly it dawned on me that she was a perfect example of one. **

**So I've completely rewritten it. Absolutely. The only thing that hasn't changed is her first name and the title of this little fic. She's straight from the Inuyasha Universe, not some crazy person using Orphen's magic, running around dimensions, etc, etc. Please take the time to read it. I'm working hard to make this work. I've got plot (finally!), theme, everything I didn't have before is suddenly hitting me in the face.**

**A more elaborate summary would probably sound something like this: Mizuki Kurahashi is your average Japanese high school student; good grades, participation in club, has friends and friendly rivalries. The two things not-so-average would be the fact that her eyes are blue and that she has absolutely no idea where she wants the rest of her life to go. **

**A weekend class trip to Tokyo brings her to the grounds of Higurashi Shrine, where an encounter with a strange necklace and the discovery of an ancient well beckons to her curiosity, and, not one to ignore it, Mizuki suddenly finds herself mixed up in a magical clan 500 years in the past, and at the mercy of one powerful demon of whose curiosity she has piqued.**

**Seriously. All she wants to do is figure out what she wants to do for the rest of her life. When did that get so complicated?-**

**Feedback is welcome, especially from anyone who read the original BM. For those of you who are new to my musings, this is an OC story. I know OCs aren't always a fan-favorite, but I love making new characters up. The whole process is highly enjoyable, even if they flop in the end. If you find any flaws with her character, let me know. I'd rather not find out a few years from now that I've been writing another mary-sue to replace the old one.**

**Oh, and I shouldn't forget to mention that-**

**Sesshomaru: I'm still here.**

**Sorcerousfang: Exactly. Couldn't do it without you, Sesshomaru ^_^**

**Sesshomaru: Of course…**

* * *

><p>It couldn't have been a better day for a class trip, at least that was the general thought among the students of Bihoku High as they stepped out of the subway and began the trek to the shrine tucked away in the middle of bustling Tokyo. The weather had cooperated this time around, with the bright sun tucked away behind the clouds for the day, and no sign of rain in sight. It was perfectly overcast, with a good breeze and a lack of heat for a late August afternoon. They had finally made their weekend trip from little Konan city, all the way back near Nagoya. Kyoto had been the original destination, but the students had wanted to go farther, and see how old culture and new technology blended within the capital city, or, that was the front, at least.<p>

They had one girl to thank for that.

"I'm so glad you managed to convince the teacher to get us out here," a chipper girl with cropped, black hair said quietly to the girl next to her. Her excitement kept her moving around, making the red and white sailor uniform she wore dance with each turn. "You're a genius, Mizuki."

The one she addressed shook her head, causing the cascade of dark hair to find its way over her shoulders again. She gave it a quick brush back, wondering briefly why she had decided to leave it loose today.

"Nah, it was mostly Kimura's doing," she said without much thought and a nod toward the taller boy just a few paces ahead of them. "He is class president, after all."

The other girl giggled, causing said president to look back with a smile. He slowed down a little until he was even-paced with the uniform-clad girls.

"You still shocked about all of this, Riho?" he asked the first girl, and she giggled once again with a lightness that caused Mizuki to laugh out loud. Riho always giggled like that around Kimura, making it amusingly obvious that she had a crush on one of her best friends.

"I'm not shocked," she retorted playfully. "Mizuki always comes up with the best ideas."

"So she's the brains and I'm the manpower," he said proudly, resulting in quite a few more laughs.

"Oh, one day, I'll be the brains _and_ the manpower," Mizuki teased, making reference to her near decision of taking him on for the role of class president. Despite their competitiveness, she and Kimura were always backing each other up as friends. She figured one day she would do it before they were no longer in classes together, but for now, she still had one more year of high school to pass him up.

Being juniors in high school left Mizuki feeling like there was something to be desired before she figured out where she wanted to go and what she wanted to do. She had absolutely no idea, and the next year would be all about studying for college entrance exams. She had thought the high school exams were bad enough, but they were already starting to cram the information down her throat like there wasn't enough time, and they were only a few months into the new school year.

Resisting the urge to sigh, Mizuki looked up at the endless number of advertisements lining the buildings around them. Getting the class out to Tokyo was great and all, but it was far from the excitement of a trip to somewhere she knew nothing about. Maybe that's what she should do; travel.

"Hey, Mizuki, we're here!" Riho nudged her excitedly.

They began the ascent of the huge number of stairs under the old torii gates. This shrine was supposed to be really old, having some odd connections to the past and famous for its little 'Four soul jewel' key chains. She hadn't read much past that - shrines weren't really her thing as far as interests go. It was Higurashi Shrine, if she was reading the kanji right.

They were greeted immediately by an old man with a thick, pointy beard and a balding topknot that was far too excited about his job. A young girl stood next to him, dressed in a traditional red and white priestess's garb and wearing an embarrassed smile. Whether it was because of her get-up or the old man's excitement, Mizuki wasn't sure, but she passed a message on to the man before leaving in another direction. Apparently she was caught in the greetings before she could take off.

Mizuki watched her go off toward the back of the shrine, and wondered briefly why her gaze lingered in that direction before concluding that she'd make the most out of this trip and explore every inch of the shrine available to them.

"Earth to Mizuki," Kimura said pointedly as he waved his hand before her face. "You're going wandering again, aren't you?"

Mizuki blinked, then smiled knowingly. Kimura and Riho never liked it when she went off on her own to explore things, and they had learned to notice when she took an interest in something.

"I swear, it's all because of your eyes that you go off all the time," Riho said with a hint of annoyance.

She was making reference to their color, which were somehow a striking blue. She was told it was the result of a genetic mishap (the doctor didn't want to say _mutation_, which is really what it was), and she even used them as a reference when they were doing genetics in biology last year. Her parents had been worried about her fitting in, and sure there were still some who thought she was wearing contacts to stand out, but she didn't have a problem with them. Besides, she liked the color blue. It was cool.

Riho liked looking into the deeper meanings of things, and apparently the color blue was associated not only with compassion and inner strength, but with 'matters of mystery'. According to her, that was why she was always wandering about, because her eyes compelled her to look for mysteries.

Maybe she should be a detective?

"I won't get into trouble," she reminded them. "I've always come back, haven't I?"

They nodded reluctantly.

"Are you really going to head off before we even get to free time?" Riho asked quietly. "Never mind that you always go off alone when free time rolls around."

"I'll be fine. I'm just curious, you know me," she said with a laugh. "Don't worry, you two. Just have a dandy time together, huh?"

Well, she got the mad blush to run across Riho's face, but Kimura had yet to notice how much the girl really liked him.

"J-just don't wander too far, okay?" she managed to say while suppressing the redness. "And your horoscopes said to keep within your own affairs today! So don't butt into anything you find."

"Don't worry," she repeated, slowing so she was trailing back a little behind the group that was moving toward the main shrine. With that, she skipped behind a building with a quick wave while the chaperone's attention was diverted, and waited until they rounded the corner before she headed off in the direction the shrine maiden girl had disappeared to.

Horoscopes and color readings didn't mean much to her, but Mizuki was always amused by what advice Riho had to offer. Sometimes the little things were dead on, and other times it was a complete miss. She had said a lot of things were generalized, and that Mizuki should keep an open mind to it, especially because she was on a 'cusp' - whatever that meant, she couldn't remember- , but she could never take it seriously. She was more interested in what she would do when a situation arose than planning for it. She was a reactionist, not a strategist, plain and simple.

Maybe not a detective, then. A martial artist?

She laughed to herself at that one. She didn't know the first thing about martial arts. Her parents had said it wasn't something a proud daughter should get herself into. She snuck in a few lessons on kendo from Kimura, but those were verbal exercises and more for Kimura's benefit than her own. He wanted to coach kendo, and his parents were just fine with that.

Sometimes she found herself jealous of her friends. They knew what they wanted out of life; for Kimura it was coaching, and Riho wanted to teach English one day, or Japanese to English exchange students. Mizuki had absolutely nothing going for her; wounds made her squeamish, she couldn't act (the one-act play festival her class put on in middle school proved that one), she wasn't all that artistic or athletic, and when she mentioned she might like training animals to her parents, the one thing she happened to have some skill in, they turned the idea down flat, saying it wouldn't do them honor for all the schooling she's gone through.

Her grades were good, yes, and the reactionist in her helped her deal with situations easily, but thinking long-term, like where she wanted to go in life and what she wanted to do for the rest of it, always left her stumped. It was like there was something she still had to figure out about herself before she could jump on the proverbial bandwagon and sail through life, and no matter how much internal digging she did, she couldn't come up with an answer around who she already thought she was.

"Careful with that!"

The voice brought her out of her meandering thoughts and stopped her feet from moving. She hadn't realized she'd walked so far, and her target of interest was just around the corner of the building she was currently leaning against. The girl was arguing with a rebel-looking teen with thick, long, _white_ hair topped with a simple, purple bandana. He was dressed in all red, the clothing looking far too outdated to be comfortable, and barefoot to boot. He had far too many items in his hands, but he seemed to be balancing them perfectly, as if all that weight hardly put forth any effort from his muscles. She couldn't tell if he was very muscular beneath his haori, but he had to be to be carrying that load.

"Grandpa wants these things laid out carefully so the students can look at them and ask questions for their research," the girl reprimanded him. "If you break anything because you're being reckless, so help me gods, I will use the 's' word so many times, you'll be six feet under."

He paled at the threat, which Mizuki couldn't understand from her point of view. Maybe he didn't like a certain word so much it just bothered him to hear it? Of course, that wouldn't explain the idea that he would be dead if she uttered it so many times. She worked at a shrine, so maybe it was a curse associated with the land?

Mizuki shook her head. Yeah, detective work probably wouldn't do so well for her.

"Keh," the teen replied after a moment of contemplation. "S'not like half the stuff is even real…"

"He got the Shikon jewel right, didn't he?" she retorted smartly. "And Sou'unga, that noh mask; Who knows what else has some sort of influence."

He made a show of taking a whiff at each item, which somehow looked as though he were used to doing so to Mizuki's eyes, and snorted when he took in dust.

"Just smells like it hasn't seen the outside for too long," he grumbled, closing his golden eyes in disgust.

…Wait. Golden?

Mizuki was used to the weird eye color she possessed, but _gold _was pushing it. Adding that to his white hair, and the guy really stood out. Was he part of some gang or something? Or maybe a really weird branch of the yakuza? But what the heck would a yakuza guy be doing following some kid's orders and helping at a shrine?

She had missed whatever her comment was to that statement while she had been flipping the golden eye color idea around in her head, and the two started moving again toward what she assumed was the area where the items were being displayed. The girl walked with a brisk pace until she was enough out of her sight that Mizuki had to peer out further just to keep an eye on them, and the guy following her was managing to find his way without seeing where he was going, at least for most of the time. His foot caught a stiff root a few moments later, causing him to lurch forward. Mizuki was certain he was going to drop everything in that moment, but he adjusted his load quickly and caught his footing in time to keep his precious cargo from hitting the ground.

Mizuki let out a quick breath of relief, until a single bound object on the top of the pile rocked precariously backwards, finally falling from the stack. She sprinted off from her hiding spot; the guy had no means of catching it, and the girl couldn't even see what had happened. It bounced roughly off of his head, enticing a curse to slip from him. Mizuki dove for it, sliding between it and the ground just in time.

At that moment, she figured she had saved his hide from whatever word it was the golden-eyed teen didn't like. She sat herself up quickly, fear of revealing anything beneath her uniform at the forefront of her mind, until she hear something snap.

Her eyes darted to the bound item in her hand, and she watched, mesmerized as each seal, which should have been fake, should have nothing attached to them but some person's clumsy handwriting, snapped with a spark that made each paper burst into a blue flame. She probably should have worried more about what was going on, but the only curious thought running through her mind was why the fire didn't burn her. It was just a comforting warmth, like she was being welcomed. Then the object exploded in a burst of light, and she heard it. A song, in a language she had never heard before, echoed as if it was being sung directly to her mind.

Then nothing. What fell to her hand was a simple necklace with a small pendant dangling from it. The old charm was nothing more than a twelve-pointed star with a small stone of turquoise set in the middle, no bigger than the tip of her pinky finger. The dark stone seemed to draw her in, as if the color was attracting the shared pigment of her eyes.

She really should listen to those horoscopes more often.

The teen had decided that his load was far less important now than figuring out what had just transpired, and she jumped when the loud sound of each item connecting with the ground entered her ears. He reached for his side, though he found nothing but empty air where whatever it was he was going to grab might have been. Instead, he balled his fists and let out a _growl_, and a really convincing one at that, before addressing her in words.

"What the hell was that? Who are you?" he yelled, causing Mizuki to shrink away from him.

"Inuyasha, calm down!" the shrine maiden demanded.

…_Inuyasha?_ That was a weird name. Maybe he _was_ a yakuza.

When he didn't, she called his name again, with a much more menacing tone than she had before. He didn't quite get the message, it seemed, until she, very firmly, said, "SIT". Mizuki then discovered exactly what word he feared so passionately, and why.

_Inuyasha_ was pulled forcefully to the ground by what looked like some power the beads around his neck possessed. Mizuki blinked at the idea; magic was kind of like the stuff Riho talked about - something she didn't believe much in or refused to entertain the idea of until she saw it proved with her own eyes.

"_Well, eyes,"_ she thought slowly. _"This might just be a weird coincidence. Nothing to get all worked up over just yet…"_

The shrine girl seemed to realize herself that she had done something she shouldn't have, and laughed nervously for a moment before coming up with an explanation.

"Haha, you, uh, tripped pretty good there, Inuyasha," she said just as nervously as she acted.

"What the hell was that for, Kagome!" he yelled back when he was able to pull his face out of the dirt. "And what do you mean tri-!"

He was silenced by the package she dropped quite deliberately on his head.

"Uh, whoops?" she said quietly, before turning back to Mizuki with a smile fit for an anxious teenager. "I'm sorry. Not really sure what that was all about, but I'll make sure my grandpa wraps that back up nice and good."

Mizuki nodded slowly, though she was thoroughly convinced that she knew _exactly_ what had happened just now. Between the disappearing sutras and the 'sit' command, it was obvious the girl knew more than she was willing to let on about.

"I'll just go ahead and take that," she finished. "Thanks for catching it!"

For a moment, Mizuki was really unsure about handing it over. Something about the way it felt in her hand was right. And that song she heard…it couldn't have been anything but what she was holding, even if all logic said magic and spells didn't exist. It was _supposed_ to be with her. She couldn't begin to explain it, but that's how she felt to her very core.

She handed it back nonetheless, and tried to ignore the screaming she felt nagging at her to demand it back.

"No problem," she said as she stood, drowning out the very loud voice in the back of her head. "Will it be laid out with the other things? I'd like to look at it better when I get the chance. It's very pretty."

She played the up the oblivious act as much as she dared, hoping to get a good look at the object later that day. If she could convince her to lay it out, she might be able to ask innocent questions of it later, to her grandfather. Considering the way she acted about this _Inuyasha _character, she'd assume the girl would try to keep him out of sight, especially with the scene he'd just created.

The girl was taken aback by her attitude for a moment, before smiling brightly and saying she would see what she could do. Mission accomplished; those were the eyes of a very relieved kid. Mizuki waved as she turned to head back in the direction she came from, but not without a final glance over her shoulder just after she turned the corner. The girl, Kagome, if she remembered correctly, was fussing over Inuyasha once again. He was rubbing his head, shouting back something about being a bit more cautious of people like '_her_', until she told him to put his bandana back on and pray that nothing broke when he dropped it all, or she would say _it_ again.

His ears flattened against his skull at that, and Mizuki had to wonder just who she had met, because ears like that aren't supposed to exist on a human's head.

About ten minutes (and an absurd amount of thinking) later, Mizuki had found her way back to the group. She snuck right in, catching up to Riho and Kimura with the ease of practice, and tapped both on opposite shoulders. She amused herself with the distraction of making them think someone to either side of them had done it, until Riho figured it out and turned in the other direction.

"You're back!" she said almost a little too loudly before catching herself. Kimura turned back as well, surprised for a moment that the blue-eyed teen was among them once again.

"That was quick," he added, and then took note of her clothes. "What happened?"

Mizuki glanced down, annoyed that she hadn't noticed the coat of dust beforehand. With a roll of her eyes she began brushing away as much as she could.

"Helped catch something," she stated vaguely as she worked, distracted for a moment by a particularly tough spot before continuing, "but if anyone asks, I was clumsy and tripped over my own two feet."

Riho gasped lightly.

"I told you about your horoscopes, Mizuki!" she reprimanded her. "You weren't supposed to jump into anyone else's business!"

"It's alright, guys, nothing happened," she said smoothly. Definitely wasn't going to tell them about the strange encounter with the necklace. Not here, anyway. Back at the hotel, possibly. It depended on whether she figured out if she was insane or not in the next three hours or so.

"This could get you into a lot of trouble, Mizuki…" Riho said slowly, concern filling her eyes.

Mizuki blinked. Riho hadn't told her something about her horoscopes? Not that she really believed them, but Riho usually read them off word for word on a near daily basis.

…Now that she thought about it, she had only told her one sentence of it before she took off.

"I didn't think too much on it since it was your cusp's horoscope, but…" she paused, and then pulled her bag around to her front, pulling out the little book she kept notes of astrology and the like in. After flipping to her most recent page, she continued. "Your Scorpio horoscope said _meddling in the affairs of others can throw you right off track today. Keep to your friends and only observe. As much as you are curious, you'll have to fight the urge to step in. _But you're on the cusp, so Sagittarius applies to you, too. _You have a great skill of listening. Use it. Someone's telling you something very important, and if you don't heed their words, you'll end up wishing you had._"

She looked even more concerned now, and Mizuki found herself thinking about what had happened back with the two teenagers.

"I'm worried it's referring to me telling you about your horoscope, Mizuki," she finally said. "If it is, then the last part of your second horoscope has relevance."

Mizuki suddenly plastered a smile on her face, surprising her friends. They needed to stop worrying.

"And if it doesn't?" she asked, stretching her arms out in front of her. "You've always said to keep an open mind about my horoscopes, Riho. Don't forget, you have to follow your own advice to make it useful advice in the first place."

It was Riho's turn to blink. She hadn't thought she'd ever have her own advice hit her in the face.

But Mizuki had a point.

"I suppose you're right," she admitted, shutting the book firmly. "But still, please, _please_ don't wander off again today. My intuition is saying something bad will happen if you do."

Mizuki nodded reluctantly. She really didn't need to wander off anymore - they were going to look at the artifacts soon enough anyway - but she wasn't sure she wouldn't find something else related to what she found earlier with the girl and her yakuza friend.

She wouldn't promise it, but she would try to stay within their sight.

Mizuki lost interest in what they were touring until they finally looped back around to where they had finished laying out the old items. She immediately set her gaze on the necklace further down the line, surprised at the bit of relief she felt in seeing it. It was unwrapped, and like each of the other pieces, there was a tablet with information about the artifact set next to it. She wanted to reach it as soon as possible.

Riho elbowed her lightly, drawing her attention back to her friends. Both fixed her with a look of reminder, and she smiled in assurance.

"It's the thing I caught for them," she explained. "That necklace, down toward the end."

Kimura and Riho both blinked, and turned to the direction she was pointing them in.

"…It's hard to see that far," Riho commented after a moment.

"Yeah," Kimura agreed. "You sure you can see it, Mizuki?"

She wasn't going to say she felt it more than saw it, because she had just noticed that herself.

"It's the blue part of it. I guess since I've seen it before it just kinda stands out to me."

Her friends seemed to leave it at that, and she was thankful she had reached a sufficient conclusion before Riho thought too much on it.

The old man, Kagome's grandfather, if she wasn't mistaken, walked them through a short bit about observing the items. They weren't allowed to handle them at all; apparently body oils could greatly damage some of the ancient artifacts. Mizuki caught herself chewing on her lower lip at that, and replaced her obvious displeasure with a look of disinterest instead.

Finally he let them free to observe, and Mizuki went straight for it.

Riho and Kimura followed right behind her, she realized after a moment, so she took a deep breath in an attempt to calm herself down. Riho would be all over her if she saw what the necklace had done before, and she couldn't let that happen again. Not with a crowd of people around her to witness it. She would just have to restrain herself for a while, and ask minimal questions.

If she didn't get where she wanted to today, she would sneak back here tomorrow. Harajuku was crowed anyway, and Mizuki wasn't a fan of crowds of _that_ caliber.

She stopped right in front of the necklace, kneeling down on the edge of the blanket to get a better look at the tablet set next to it. Her friends leaned over it behind her, observing her with a concerned look and the object with one of curiosity at the same time. She wanted to reach out for it - she could hear it calling for her again, in that same song she heard before - but she stayed her hand. She couldn't afford to do something that would prevent her from getting close to it. She would not let that happen.

All the same though, she had to wonder why she was hearing what she was hearing, or why she was drawn to the necklace at all. Nothing like what happened when she caught the thing should even be possible. _Magic_ shouldn't exist at all, and yet she found herself caught up in what could only be explained as magic, and her curiosity was infinitely piqued.

"Yanagawa's Artifact," Kimura read off, interrupting her thoughts. "An ancient stone necklace said to have been passed down through generations of priests in the Yanagawa family. Each possessor was rumored to be able to wield strange powers."

Mizuki nodded absentmindedly. The name hadn't rung any bells in her head; however, the idea of powers she found herself believing. The song was still humming along in her ears, and though she couldn't follow any of the words it sang, she did know it was coming from the necklace.

"Ooooooh! You've spotted something very powerful!" a voice rang out cheerfully above them. The three looked up to find the old man standing before them, a huge smile stretching his beard wide across his chin. He opened his mouth to continue, but stopped short on something.

Mizuki blinked. He was staring right at her.

"…Do you know the secret of this necklace, child?" he asked slowly, making Mizuki jump a little. Did he know about the song?

When she shook her head, his smile brightened up another twenty watts, and she felt a sigh of relief escape her the moment he began talking again.

"Why, there was a secret way of deciding how the necklace was passed down!" he bellowed loudly, far too into his story to have a care as to what those around thought of him. "And if you were a part of this ancient family, you'd have been its inheritor."

She froze on those words. What did he mean _she_ would have gotten it? Was there some reason the necklace was calling for her after all?

"What do you mean, sir?" Riho asked quietly, bringing Mizuki back to his explanation. "How do you know Mizuki would have inherited the necklace?"

He smiled, and then simply said, "You have blue eyes."

"…You mean the Yanagawa family passed the necklace on to the next of kin born with blue eyes?" Kimura questioned.

Mizuki shook her head. No, her blue eyes were a mutation of DNA. Nothing more.

And yet, that song…

"How long ago did the Yanagawa family exist?" she questioned out of the blue. "And how did you come into possession of this artifact?"

The old man smiled as if he were entertained by the idea of having someone interested in his collection of old things.

"The Yanagawa family died out nearly 500 years ago, according to our ancient scrolls," he explained, ushering them and the crowd that had gathered to follow him. "They state that a horrible battle between the family and demons broke out, and the family succumbed to them in the end. The necklace of the Yanagawa's was lost in that battle, but I myself found it here nearly twenty years ago."

At the mention of here, he proudly motioned with his hand to a small structure about the size of a shed.

"This is the Bone Eater's Well," he continued. "Legend states people once dumped demon's bones down this well, and after several days, the bones would vanish. If people wanted something to disappear, they dumped it here. Some of these things have shown up at our beloved shrine! Our ancestors kept careful record of everything they found within the well."

He paused, as if thinking or deciding to add some kind of dramatic effect, before finishing.

"Some have said this well connects the present with 500 years in the past."

Mizuki took that idea and stored it away in the back of her mind. The necklace came from 500 years ago? The battle in which the necklace was lost was that long ago, anyway. The well was an interesting…

"…_No way,"_ Mizuki thought after a moment.

The song was echoing from the well house, just as strongly as it echoed from the necklace.

"There are a lot of things connected to 500 years in the past here," Kimura commented under his breath, though loud enough for Mizuki to hear him.

"…What do you mean?" she asked. The well and necklace were just two things; that didn't exactly constitute as a lot in her book.

"You were away during the story of the God Tree," he explained. "That really tall tree in the middle of the shrine. There's a scar in the middle of it, like bark won't grow there. Mr. Higurashi explained that 500 years ago, there was a half-demon boy pinned there by a spell, until a young priestess released him."

Mizuki wasn't exactly sure how, but she made one connection right there. The two she had met earlier jumped to the front of her mind.

"Yeah, and the Shikon Jewel key chains that are so popular here are connected with an ancient, 500-year-old legend of a priestess who battled hundreds of demons to keep the jewel safe. Apparently it could give demons more power."

"_He got the Shikon jewel right, didn't he?" she retorted smartly. "And Sou'unga, that noh mask; Who knows what else has some sort of influence."_

That conversation she had overheard was starting to make more sense now.

"It all sounds far too coincidental," Kimura commented with a laugh. "People will do anything these days to make people believe their stories."

Mizuki laughed along, but withheld any comment. She might give away her thoughts on that matter.

While they waited for the right subway car to roll up for them, Mizuki kneeled down with a piece of paper and a pen she borrowed from Riho. When Riho asked why, she simply said she wanted to write down her experiences for the day so she wouldn't forget about them later. The curious girl left it at that, which left Mizuki to put together the puzzle of her own thoughts.

First, the necklace. Yanagawa's artifact. It existed 500 years ago, and was given to the next of kin with blue eyes. Blue eyes was a total mutation in a Japanese person's DNA, but this clan seemed to have it frequently enough that they could pass something on within the family enough times to make it important. Mizuki normally would have written something off as a coincidence right there, except that it erased its bindings at the touch of her hand, and she heard that song twice.

Second, those two kids. Kagome the shrine maiden, and _Inuyasha_ the not-yakuza. The story about the tree gave her a wild idea about the two. The golden eyes, the inhuman ears that _moved_, the old clothing…it was all far too coincidental. With logic tossed out the window, and the idea that the well could connect present time to past, it could be accurate to assume that Inuyasha was the half-demon in the story. His name would certainly fit better 500 years ago compared to now.

And she might be pretty far off on this one, but the command Kagome used to 'sit' Inuyasha could have been a priestess-like power. Her familiarity with the boy and the fact that she lives on the grounds of a shrine with something like that well could point her toward being the priestess of the story.

Those two, and its habit of spitting things up from the past, made the well a pretty prime point of interest. Everything originated back to it and where it apparently led. 500 years in the past was no joke, but Mizuki would be damned if she was going to let something like this slip through her fingers while it was still screaming at her.

…Reporter might be something to consider down the road if she managed to get this information right.

Mizuki shook her head. It wasn't really a time to be thinking about an appropriate job. Instead she flipped the paper over to summarize what she had just connected.

1. Inuyasha was the half-demon of legend.

2. Kagome was the priestess of legend.

3. The well was what made it possible for Kagome to be the legend, and for Inuyasha of legend to be in this time.

4. She had something to do with that necklace and the Yanagawa family.

She circled the last one several times, as if to punctuate in her mind that she was, indeed, going to figure this out. Even if it meant throwing herself in the well to test it all out. She could get back, if Inuyasha and Kagome were any indication.

…Of course, this was with logic thrown out the window. Legends were legends for a reason, after all. There was no real proof. Some crazy part of her mind might have been screwing with her head just for kicks and giggles.

The train finally arrived, so Mizuki folded the paper up and tucked it into her pocket. She'd look it over again later.

When they arrived back at the hotel, everyone was dismissed for dinner and free time. They were supposed to be back by nine, but Mizuki had every intention of getting back on that train and back to the shrine. The further they got from the shrine, the more she felt she was leaving something very important behind her, and she was certain she wouldn't be able to sleep without confirming her suspicions.

"Where do you think we should go to eat?" Riho asked as soon as they entered their room.

Mizuki just shrugged, slipping out of her uniform and into a loose pair of jeans and a nondescript navy blue shirt.

"Not really hungry," she admitted as she tied her hair back into a low ponytail.

"Then why change into street clothes?"

Mizuki paused in grabbing the paper from her skirt pocket long enough to give her friend a raise of an eyebrow.

"I hate skirts, remember?" she said, slipping the word out like it was bitter on her tongue. "Jeans are much more comfortable, and much easier to move around in. Besides, we're in Tokyo, not Konan. There could be creeps wandering around this time of day. And my uniform is a bit dirty."

Riho rolled her eyes.

"You're wearing street clothes as if you were planning to go out, yet you're not hungry," she began, making Mizuki freeze. "_Something_ went on at that shrine. You're restless and want to go back, but you want a distraction because you told us you wouldn't leave our sight. Mizuki, let it go. Your horoscopes, remember?"

Mizuki sighed, and then returned to packing a few things in her backpack.

"Yeah, a few things are running through my head," she admitted honestly, "but I'm sticking to my word; right now, I just don't feel like sitting."

"What hap-?"

"Or talking about it," she interrupted. "It's not important anyway. Just stuff about what I want to do, you know?"

Of course, it was stuff she wanted to do this second, not stuff she wanted to do concerning her future employment, but Riho didn't need to know that.

Riho nodded cautiously, but left it at that.

"So, you gonna stay in that or come with me to do something fun and distracting?" Mizuki asked with a deceiving smile.

Riho laughed in ignorance, and asked her to wait a moment while she figured out what to wear. With their backs to each other now, Mizuki dropped a few other things in her bag; flashlight, water bottle, and a rolled-up waterproof jacket. She never knew what could happen, and along with the snack crackers, notebook, pencil, and the latest Weekly Shounen Jump magazine she found at the 7-11 down the street from the hotel, she should be set for however long it took her to go back to the shrine, talk to the old man some more (and maybe the two teens), and get back.

She'd just tell everyone she got lost. It was typical of her, after all.

They met Kimura down in the lobby and turned in their keys before heading out. Kimura and Riho insisted on getting food first, if they were going to wander around Tokyo entertaining _her_, so Mizuki sighed and agreed. There was a Mos Burger down the street. It would do for dinner.

Her two friends ordered after Mizuki insisted she was full (and she was, really), and she sat reading over her musings until they were done.

"What's that?" Kimura asked as the waitress left, indicating the piece of paper.

"Just notes on today," Mizuki quickly supplied, tucking it back into her pocket. "We're supposed to keep track of differences between modern and ancient stuff, right? Well, I figured I'd give myself a head start."

"What do you have down already?" Riho asked, pulling out her own notebook and pencil as if she had decided she was going to gain some ground as well.

Mizuki smiled nervously, and threw out whatever came to mind.

"Oh, you know. The building styles, the clothes they wear, the idea that demons exist, names. That kind of stuff."

Kimura gave her a strange look, and Mizuki realized she must have slipped.

"What names?" he asked with interest.

Yep. She blew it.

"Ah, well…" she started, realizing she wasn't getting out of this one with Kimura sticking his nose in it, "when I wandered off, I ran into that shrine girl and a friend of hers. She called him _Inuyasha_, and I thought it might have been a nickname. Then I started thinking, well, if it really was his name, it would be something really old, you know?"

They seemed to think on that quietly, until Riho took down some notes.

"It's a weird name, don't you think?" she asked as she erased what she had written. "It would have to be written with the kanji for dog. I really don't see any other way. And who would want to name their kid after a dog?"

This is precisely why she was friends with Riho. She could bring out the ideas that Mizuki couldn't think of right off hand. Like the kanji that made up his name. 500 years ago, a demon might be named _Inuyasha_ if he were a dog demon, which totally accounted for the ears she saw on his head, and possibly the white hair.

"Someone who really likes dogs?" Kimura wondered aloud jokingly. They laughed, though Mizuki's was forced. Really, the thought of demons being real? It should have been laughable, but she was finding all these little things were adding up, and the answer she was coming up with was undeniable.

Demons were definitely real. At least 500 years ago.

She got up suddenly, set on doing what she had intended to do from the start. When her friends gave her a questioning look, she feigned feeling a little sick.

"I'll be right back. I think I should run to the restroom," she explained.

"It's a couple of doors down from here," Riho provided, her look changing to one of concern. "Are you okay? I could go with you."

"Nah," she said quickly. "My stomach just hurts a little. I'll be fine."

"If you say so…" she complied.

"I'll be right back," she assured them, and left the restaurant behind her.

"_Sorry guys," _she thought as she headed straight for the subway. _"But I can't just wait around on this. I have to go back there. I just know it."_

She felt like a thief.

Mizuki sighed quietly, looking over her shoulder at the house that was oh-so-close to the store house, it was almost unreasonable. Everything had been put away, unfortunately, and somehow she found the place in the dark, as if she were drawn to it. And she would embrace that feeling. She was going to figure out this whole necklace thing if it was the last thing she did.

And damn her bad sense of direction, or she would have been here earlier to actually ask about the thing, instead of sneaking around like a thief.

…And, no, that would _not_ even be _considered _for a profession.

It was almost nine; it'd taken her three full hours to finally find her way back to it, and by then, everyone was inside, had eaten dinner, and the house was slowly going dark. She would kill whatever had possessed her to walk in anyway, but damn it, she needed to get that screaming out of her head.

She flipped on her flashlight as soon as she had managed to get into the store house. It was small and cramped, but organized. The necklace, however small it was, was making a loud enough racket to her ears that she discovered the corner it was hidden in rather quickly.

Her hands found their way to the necklace so easily, she was surprised. It had been rebound, but now the sutras weren't snapping off like before. It worried her for a moment -maybe he had something more powerful around it now- before she found that they simply peeled right off of each other.

"_Defective, apparently,"_ she thought, and left the store house just as she had found it, necklace in hand.

She meant to head back to the streets, safe with the feeling that the necklace wasn't screaming for her anymore, except that the song drifted to her again. It was louder this time, and she looked down at the necklace suddenly to find it glowing a faint blue. The same as it had earlier, it radiated a warmth, like it was beckoning her.

It was then that she decided she was going to test her theory.

Mizuki aimed straight for the well house, ignoring the part of the sign she could make out in the dark that reminded people to stay out. She slid the door open as quietly as possible, and as soon as she had enough room to slip in, slid it right back where it had been. She paused at the top of the steps for a moment, staring down at the darkness that engulfed the tiny shack. She flicked her flashlight back on, illuminating the well at the bottom of the small staircase.

It was open, like it was welcoming her to try it. She gulped, slightly apprehensive, before walking down to the well and leaning against its lip. She shone the flashlight into it, finding nothing but dirt at the bottom. Six or seven feet to the bottom? Maybe.

The tug she felt on her wrist was the last thing she expected, and she held in a yelp of surprise. She looked to find the necklace pulling toward the well, as if it was eager to enter it.

Mizuki swallowed the lump in her throat.

"_You want to go home," _she thought silently. _"Your 500-years-in-the-past home, to be more precise."_

When it pulled again, Mizuki was at a loss for thought for several moments. Then, she decided to test the random theory that had suddenly come to her head. Not a logical theory, but logic was long gone by now, so what the heck.

"…_If you understand what I'm saying, then stop pulling."_

It stopped.

Mizuki dropped her flashlight in the well.

She cursed silently at the noise it made, hoping it hadn't caught the Higurashi family's attention. The necklace tugged again though, more forcefully this time.

"_Alright, I get it. Stop pulling."_

It stopped once again, and Mizuki took a deep breath. This would take some getting used to. It really _had_ been screaming at her to retrieve it.

She nodded sharply after another moment of thought, then swung her legs over the side of the well.

"…_Here goes nothing,"_ she thought.

She jumped in.

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><p><strong>Sorcerousfang: Well, that's the first, new, chapter for BM revisited. Longer than a typical chapter for me, but we'll see if that lasts or not. I have a lot more hope for this one than I did for the last.<strong>

**And I know I really haven't gotten into the story itself yet, but I have given a few plot points for everyone to consider. The necklace for one, and the reasons Mizuki's so drawn to it she resorts to stealing it.**

**Yep. No more mary-sue. Thievery is a **_**flaw**_**!**

**I'm not sure when I'll get the next chapter out, but I'm working on it (out of order, as usual). College is an interesting experience, and I'm finally starting to get the workload I expected. We'll see where I go with this.**

**Those of you wondering about Deep Water? I haven't abandoned it, I'm just at a loss for inspiration right now. Don't worry; one of these days I'll sit my butt down and just start writing, and go from there.**

**When I get some art up, I'll let you know, too. I need to do story art for this.**

**Sesshomaru: …**

**Sorcerousfang: You're awfully silent, Sesshomaru.**

**Sesshomaru: Just reading your notes. How **_**do**_** you plan to make this work?**

**Sorcerousfang: I'm working on it. Just be happy you don't take ten chapters to show up in this rewrite.**

**Sesshomaru: This one amuses me more than the last with its impossibilities.**

**Sorcerousfang: You could have said something, you know?**

**Sesshomaru: You edit everything I say in here.**

**Sorcerousfang: …True.**

**Well, I'll work on updating something, anything soon. So until next time, please leave me with some reviews. I'd very much appreciate them.**

**Thank you for reading!**


	2. They Make You Think

**Disclaimer: Once again, Inuyasha does not belong to me. Under the fair use clause, I am totally allowed to do what everyone else on this site does.**

**Sorcerousfang: Hello again, everyone! Back with chapter two!**

**Just for clarification, I've tried very hard to be authentic, and I've used my own experiences in Japan to gain a bit of authenticity. If you were wondering why MOS Burger didn't have a bathroom, well, it didn't. The public one was down the street (and if you ever go, don't forget your own toilet paper, as it doesn't usually have any). Japan has 7-11s as well, and manga is sold in just about every one. A teenager going on a subway all by her lonesome is normal.**

**Sesshomaru: Is all your explaining necessary?**

**Sorcerousfang: Some people are going to wonder. Seriously.**

**Sesshomaru: Hn.**

**Sorcerousfang: **_**You**_** don't even know what modern Japan is like. Even you could benefit from some extra notes.**

**Sesshomaru: And you know nothing of my own time.**

**Sorcerousfang: Hence why you're still here.**

**Sesshomaru: …**

**Sorcerousfang: …Anywho, I'll just get on with the story. Special thanks to those who reviewed the first chapter! ^_^**

**On another note, fanfiction doesn't like question marks and exclamation points right next to each other. Add them where you feel is necessary.**

* * *

><p>Culture shock is was it was supposedly called when one couldn't handle the difference between their own home and the place they visit.<p>

Shock was a mild term.

It's hard to describe the feelings you get running for your life though a forest while a creature you've never seen before chases you through every tree, mostly because you're screaming too much or breathing too hard to hear or feel anything other than fear.

Yes, shock was mild. Hysteria might be a better term.

Roughly fifteen minutes ago according to her watch, Mizuki had scrambled out of a well suddenly full of bones by climbing (and slipping) on vines along its walls until she found herself staring at trees instead of the inside of a well house. She'd definitely done it; she was 500 years in the past, long before the age of trains and phones and cars. Before Meiji, before Bakumatsu, all the way back to the Sengoku period.

This was feudal Japan, right under her feet.

And thus she had gone off to wander. If she could get through, she could get back, obviously. The whole reason she jumped in was to satisfy her curiosity, and that meant seeing what she could find. Direction wasn't important; if she walked in a straight line, she could go back in that line to find the well and go home. Simple enough.

The sensation of walking through an old forest was impossible to put words to. It was quiet save for the bugs that sang through the night. No noisy traffic or people, just nature. 500-year-old nature. This was one of those things she could just drink up for all time if she decided to. It was so different than the life she had always known.

Mizuki had to wonder what a village would look like through her own eyes, rather than the paintings that depicted them. It would be incredible to see an old house, watch or even help build something. Farmers, cattle, horses; there were so many things she wanted to experience while she was here.

Running for her life? Not one of them.

She had not accounted for the fact that demons, stories, legends, _whatever_, had the possibility of existing as well. Had she thought about it, she probably would have thought twice about jumping into the well on the necklace's insistence, or at least have waited for someone to come along so she wasn't alone.

Speaking of the necklace…

The thing, for all the story said about it, was useless so far. Granting the bearer mysterious power her foot! It was nothing but a necklace at this point. Wasn't there something that it could do to get the demon away from her? Maybe if she yelled 'sit' like the girl did to that Inuyasha fellow, something would happen.

"I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die," she repeated as she slid around a tree. Actually, the thing wasn't very agile. It kept running into just about every tree she touched, like it didn't see the branch right in front of its face. If it hadn't been screeching about her being it's next meal, she might have been laughing.

She took off again, scanning the trees for somewhere to hide. Among all of these trees, there had to be something relatively safe to duck under.

It was shortly after that thought that she fell right through a tangled mess of roots. They seemed to part right around her, as if inviting her into the damp hole beneath them, and when she looked up, there didn't seem to have been a big enough space for her to fit through. She breathed heavily for a few moments, and they dragged on for what seemed like forever.

"Where are you, sneaky little human?" the creature called bitterly from somewhere out of her hiding place. She backed into the dirt wall behind her, trying to get out of the faint moonlight that came in around the roots above her. Eyes wide as the creature snaked through the air above her, she swallowed back the lump in her throat, clamped her hands over her nose and mouth to hold her breath and froze. The pounding of her heart sounded far too loud in her ears, and she hoped the thing couldn't hear it from where she hid.

It cursed loudly when apparently it had decided that she must have gotten away somehow, and slipped away without another word. Mizuki still didn't blink, breathe, or move so much as a twitch. There was no way she could know for certain if the thing was actually gone or just hiding in wait for her, and she didn't want to test that. If she were wrong, then…

That thought made her gasp for the oxygen her lungs so desperately desired, and her eyes darted around the world outside of her shelter, terrified that the thing may have finally found her. All remained silent, however, sending a great flood of relief through her and allowing her to relax against the dirt wall behind her.

"_Never again,"_ she thought to herself as the adrenaline disappeared and her body began to remind her why she wasn't in an athletic club. Her muscles ached from the run, and she must have rolled her ankle or something because it burned when she attempted to stretch in the cramped space. She'd have to remember to thank the gods that the demon was a klutz and the trees were oh-so-conveniently placed, but _after_ she got out of the hole in the ground, which she wasn't about to do just yet.

And not just because she was all achy.

She swallowed back the lump of fear that had formed once again in her throat, reminding herself that the thing seemed to have disappeared from sight. Whatever it was, monster or…demon, she considered, she never wanted to see it again. She'd never quite known herself to be particularly fearful of anything - it kind of came with the territory of being naturally curious - but _that_ she was sure to see in her dreams. And not pleasant ones for that matter, for they would surely involve whatever the demon had had in store for her.

She wrapped her arms around herself as she shivered involuntarily, trying not to think about what would happen were she to have been caught by that thing. As much as the past few events had felt like a dream, she had a definite, strong voice in the back of her mind telling her she was very much awake, and that she had very much been in real danger. Terrifyingly _real _danger.

And damn it, she was not going to cry!

Her eyes stung with tears that she refused to let fall, because right now she was safe, and there was absolutely no reason to cry. None! This little adventure was all there was going to be, then she could just jump back in the well and catch up with Riho and Kimura and spin the little web of a lie she was already weaving together in her head. No one would ever know of this time because she would never tell anyone. Demons would go back to being stories, the necklace would be returned to the Higurashi's without anyone ever being the wiser. She'd just forget about this little trip.

With that thought, Mizuki found a sudden resolve in her to go do just that; end this little traipse and just go back to her own time. So despite feeling sore, she wormed her way up through the roots she had fallen through (all the while wondering exactly _how_ she had squeezed through there), and managed to get herself halfway up before she froze once again.

…Maybe she'd wait until morning.

Resolve gone as she realized how dark the forest seemed to have become, she slipped back in the little cavern and sat, staring at the trees above her. It had already been dark when she had come out of the well, but she hadn't been thinking about demons or dangers or whatever, so the lack of lighting hardly fazed her.

"_Oh, wait! Duh."_ she thought suddenly, then flipped her backpack off of her shoulders and quickly rifled through it. _"Somewhere in here…where is it?"_

The proverbial light went on in her head, and she abandoned her search for her flashlight. She must have dropped it somewhere when she was running…or back in the well. Well, damn, that was going to get her in trouble. Waiting it out until morning was sounding better and better. She just hoped she didn't get herself bitten to death by bugs.

Shifting so that she was a little more comfortable in the slightly cramped space, Mizuki sighed. This was definitely going to be a long night, and she hoped they weren't overreacting back at home. She didn't even want to think about the trouble she was going to get into when she finally showed back up…

./-/-/-/-/-/.

She didn't know when she had finally fallen asleep, but by the time Mizuki woke up, light was streaming in through the roots above her head. A glance at her watch told her it was just after eight, which would have been more of a surprise if she hadn't already expected to sleep lightly. The sounds of various birds calling was a welcome change to the night filled with the echoes of insects, which had been far more eerie than it should have sounded.

With a little effort, she pulled herself free from her shelter and stretched every muscle she knew how to. Sleeping in the little place may have been safe, but definitely not very comfortable. Aside from that, the morning had made her painfully aware of her appearance; dirty, ragged, and in desperate need of a hair brush.

She settled for using her fingers instead, removing the hair tie from around the tangled mass known as her hair and slowly working each knot out. One major problem with long hair was that it tangled so easily, but it wasn't a big enough one that she was going to cut off her long locks. Despite having to have it up during school, she thoroughly enjoyed having long hair. It was pretty, for lack of a better reason, and she just could never imagine herself with it short.

With the process complete, she rebound her hair and focused on her clothing. She couldn't do anything about the snags that had occurred during her flight yesterday, but the dirt was another matter. She brushed herself down, removing as much as she could without using water (she'd drunk half of that last night…), and found herself rather satisfied with her results, aside from the wrinkles.

"Mizuki, you are one tough cookie," she said confidently to herself, finding courage now that the day was upon her and she could see what was around her. She wasn't going to lie to herself; last night was the scariest event she could ever recall going through next to falling out of a tree when she was little. That didn't mean she wasn't silently going to take a bit of pride from the fact that she survived that ordeal.

"…Wonder if I could make scary movies with personal experience like this," she wondered aloud briefly, before shaking the thought out of her head. She didn't even _like_ scary movies; why the heck would she want to _make_ one? Besides, she had sworn to herself last night that nobody was going to know anything about this, didn't she? She couldn't very well make a movie based on her experience and not raise some questions as to how she came up with it.

With failed career thought number whatever-it-was-up-to-now successfully shoved into the back of her mind, Mizuki glanced around her. She had come from one of these directions around her. Now the problem was figuring out which one. The direction toward the tree that the nice little shelter was tucked next to was out, at least, because she wouldn't have found the hole if she had come from the other side of it. Aside from that, she didn't think she would have run directly toward any tree, either, since she was trying to dodge them. That left roughly two directions in mind; to the right or to the left of the shelter.

She couldn't truly recall what was on either side of her when she had fallen through the root patch, and the night had weighed down the grass with dew, so she was having a hard time finding her footsteps, so after five minutes of contemplation, she gave up and flipped her backpack around to her front. Producing her water bottle from it's pocket, she knelt down and cleared a relatively flat area of debris, and spun the bottle on its surface. With it still half-full, the bottle didn't spin long, and eventually stopped with the cap pointing roughly to the left.

"To the right it is," she said with a frown as she picked up the bottle and dusted off the dirt that clung to it. Last time she tried spinning a bottle to determine her way, she ended up going in the exact opposite direction she had needed to head in. Thus, she decided she would never trust a bottle's judgment again. Bottles were liars when it came to direction, and she was going to get a one-up on the plastic convenience if it was the last thing she did.

Damn bottles for being sneaky bastards.

It was when she realized her watch was reading one o'clock that Mizuki passionately kicked a fallen tree and cursed when the action backfired right into the nerves of her toes. Disgruntled and tired, she took a seat on the hard wood and sighed. She was utterly lost because of her decision to use the bottle and her simplification of which direction she had come from, and now her toes hurt and her stomach was grumbling about being rather empty, since she hadn't eaten since lunch yesterday. Ooooh, she should have stuck around long enough to order something from MOS Burger. That's what her stomach was relaying dispassionately to her head. That, and a flood of colorful words.

To silence her sudden personification of her stomach, Mizuki opened her backpack and dug out the crackers she'd packed away earlier. They had been for the subway ride back to the Higurashi Shrine, but she had forgotten about them while she contemplated the necklace ordeal. Grateful for her lapse of thought last evening, she pulled the bag open and devoured a few handfuls before realizing that what was in her hands now was the _only _food she had, and she had no idea when she would be finding the well again.

Slowing down despite the echoing of her stomach, she resolved to eat only a few more handfuls, and very slowly. She needed to think, and what better way to do that than to do so while snacking.

Fact one was that she was lost in feudal Japan. Kind of a big problem, especially if she couldn't find anyone to help her. Even if she _did_ find someone, she couldn't guarantee it would be easy to get the help she needed, considering her appearance and the fact that the well was in the middle of the woods.

Fact two; she was relatively defenseless. She could punch and kick, sure, but she wouldn't be able to do anything against a demon if she came across another one, of that she was certain. So far, there hadn't been any more incidents, which led her to believe that demon sightings were more of a nighttime occurrence. It was quiet during her search for the well.

Fact three; she still had no clues about the damned necklace. If she concentrated hard enough, she could hear the song she had heard when she had first touched the artifact. It was comforting, warm, unlike when it was shouting at her to come and get it. The song was the only thing that assured her the necklace was supposed to do _something_, but what that was, she was about as sure as the tablet from the shrine was vague.

A glance at the bag in her lap made her flatten and roll the open end closed. She'd eaten a little more than she had meant to while she was thinking.

It was while she was putting her crackers back in her bag that she felt something strange. It was like a chill of sorts, except it didn't leave her feeling cold, just nervous. She glanced around her surroundings suspiciously, eyeing the foliage as if something would jump out of it any moment. It was strangely familiar, but she couldn't recall where she had felt something like it before.

Cautious, Mizuki slung her bag back onto her back. The feeling was…around her? Like a fog in the air, almost, but insubstantial.

"_Okay, Mizuki. No need to panic; it's just weird, that's all," _she assured herself, but backed up against a tree nonetheless. It was almost eerily quiet. She couldn't hear any birds around her, no insects, nothing that would indicate life.

Then something crunched in front of her.

The sound echoed again a moment later, followed by a branch snapping. She tried to swallow the lump in her throat as the sound morphed into something like footsteps, but it remained despite her efforts. She realized a moment later that she was shaking, and as a tall form made its way through the trees in front of her, she realized she couldn't move.

"I thought I had smelled something interesting," a grey-skinned, human-like creature said smoothly as it ducked under a branch and into the space left by the fallen tree, "and here I find a tasty little girl."

If she had really been thinking about it, she probably would have been mad about the 'little girl' remark - hell, she wasn't _that_ small - but the only thought running through her head was _run, _and her betraying legs weren't cooperating with her instincts. The demon in front of her was at least a head and a half taller than her, thick muscles rippling as he took each step, bald head making his green eyes seem that much brighter. He was uglier than the first one, despite looking more human, and was dressed in nothing but the equivalent of a rag around his waist.

She recalled momentarily where she had felt this strange feeling before; it was when the first demon snaked around the corner of the tree beside her.

The demon reached a bulky hand out to her, a laugh rippling through him. "So scared you can't even speak, eh?" he chuckled. "You're making this far too easy for me, little human."

His clawed fingers brushing against her shoulder was apparently enough to break whatever force was holding her there, and she let out an ear-piercing scream she didn't know she had in her. The demon recoiled momentarily, giving her a big enough gap to sprint off to the right.

"That's more like it!" he bellowed after her. She didn't pause to look at him, afraid she would trip or run into a tree. She just ran as fast as she could, trying to ignore the footsteps close behind her, the pounding of her heart in her chest, the screaming of her muscles as she pushed herself away from the creature. Nothing else mattered except expanding that distance between them until she could hide away.

_If _she could hide away.

It was catching up to her, not just the demon, but her lack of food for the day. She was lacking the strength she needed to keep running, to get away, and despite the adrenaline coursing through her veins and the fear quaking through her body, she was slowing down.

She ducked around a tree and nearly tripped on a root, but caught herself on the tree beside her. Pushing off as soon as she caught a breath, she continued her escape, until a sound crash resounded behind her. She looked, curiosity overcoming her, to find that the demon had run right into a branch sticking out of the tree she had just caught herself on.

It didn't occur to her until she turned away that she hadn't remembered having to dodge that branch. It didn't matter though; she just needed to get away while the demon was distracted. If only she could hide…

She hadn't expected the trees to disappear around her when she pushed through the foliage. Suddenly she was in a clearing, the top of a hill, where the forest disappeared for at least a mile, and a river ran clearly from the forest and out beyond her sight.

This was _bad_.

She quickly chose the right and ran along the trees before ducking back into them. She couldn't run through that open field; it was like putting a giant sign on her that said 'come and get it!' Instead of risking that, she dove under a thick bush, praying it would hide her long enough for the demon to lose her trail and grow bored of its chase.

She froze when she heard footsteps just beyond where she hid. They were considerably lighter than those of her pursuer, however, making her blink.

"Oh, those flowers look lovely!" piped the cheerful voice of a child.

A child?

She was going to cry, and she knew it. The demon was headed this way, she was sure, and this little kid was going to…

Mizuki bit her lip. There was no way. But she had to stay hidden! She couldn't die here!

But the child would never leave her conscious, she knew that. It would be all her fault if she…

"I lose one, but find another," echoed a familiar voice. "What a lucky day."

He was back. She could see his giant feet from where she hid, and the tiny feet of the child's as she took several steps back. Pre-picked flowers gathered at the tiny feet.

"Will you run like the other?"

NO!

She didn't know where the strength suddenly came from, but she launched herself out from the bush and right at the child as the demon reached out. The tiny body gave easily under her weight, and they crashed to the ground together. With the aid of the hill, both rolled quickly to the bottom, though the trip left a searing feeling of heat on Mizuki's left arm that she couldn't make sense of. When they stopped, she released the child from her grip, and the small girl stood with a look of surprise plastered across her brown eyes as she looked her over.

"Ah, Miss, you're bleeding!" she exclaimed worriedly.

She expected that from the run, since she wasn't very good at dodging small branches, but it wasn't until she looked to where the child's attention was that she realized what the painful clawing at her arm had been. There was a good gash in her upper arm, and blood welled from the wound faster than she had ever known was possible. The absolute agony from it finally registered in her mind, and she clutched at the wound and doubled over herself as her stomach flipped at the sight. Oh god, she was bleeding and it _hurt_…

"You put up a brave fight, little one," the demon commented as he approached the two. Mizuki looked up at him in fear, which suddenly turned to disgust as she watched him lick his claws clean of _her blood_. He was enjoying the taste of her _blood_! What the hell was he; a vampire?

Her stomach rolled again, threatening to make her see her improvised lunch for a second time.

"Go away!"

The girl had defiantly stepped forward, tiny hands balled into fists. The demon laughed outright, amused by her antics. No, she should be running! Why was she trying to stand up to a demon?

"And give up a couple of tasty morsels like the two of you?" he questioned in amusement. "A child and one with power. I couldn't ask for more."

"Lord Sesshomaru will be mad if you hurt me," she explained.

Lord who? And what the hell did he mean 'one with power'?

The demon seemed to have the same problem of recognition she was having, if the slight tilt of his head indicated anything.

"And where is this 'Lord Sesshomaru' now, little-"

He was cut off as a glowing green rope seemed to flash around him, and his eyes widened in surprise. Then all at once his body split into pieces, slashed apart by the light as it danced and retreated behind them. Her stomach did another 360, though several times over. The thing was dead. It was dead because it was _torn apart by some freaky light and there was blood and __**everything**__ everywhere…_

"Lord Sesshomaru!"

Mizuki tore her eyes away from the…pile…in favor of taking in the view of her savior. The girl, dressed in a bright orange and tan yukata, was cheerfully smiling at the figure behind them, and when Mizuki finally turned enough to view him, she found herself at a loss for words. Standing silently behind them was a tall man dressed in old-time white clothing trimmed with red and flowers. Elaborate armor covered him from his chest to his thighs, tied off at his waist with a flowing yellow and purple obi. Two hilts of a couple of swords were tucked close to his left side, while his right was occupied by a large, very soft-looking pelt.

"Were you hurt, Rin?" he questioned the girl without much concern to match the inquiry, which drew her attention up to his face. He was handsome, somewhat feminine, if she dared, with smooth features. Two stripes adorned each cheek, and it almost appeared as though he was wearing eye shadow, though since the color of the markings matched the stripes, she was more inclined to think that he was born with them. A crescent moon was visible from just beneath his bangs, more blue than the magenta of his stripes.

Handsome, yes, but humans didn't have features like that. She was staring at the face of a demon.

"Not at all, my Lord," she answered cheerfully, making Mizuki wonder briefly if the girl was phased by anything. "This lady helped me. Oh, but she's hurt now!"

Her attention was diverted to the girl as she looked over her wound with concern. She put on a strained smile in an attempt to comfort her.

"It's not too bad, I think," she tried. Not her best lie in the world, she'd admit, but hopefully the girl would calm down. "I'm just glad you're okay."

"But there's a lot of blood, Miss…" she trailed off, and for a moment, Mizuki wasn't sure why. Then it registered in her head what the girl was requesting.

"Mizuki," she offered. "My name, I mean."

Rin nodded enthusiastically before turning toward the ever-silent demon beside her.

"Lord Sesshomaru, Miss Mizuki got hurt because she helped me," she explained. "May I help her with her wound?"

She looked up at him and swallowed hard involuntarily when she found his gaze already directed at her.

"Rin, you shouldn't ask such things of Lord Sesshomaru!" squawked a small voice. Her gaze immediately shot down to the left of the demon's leg, only to find a small, green demon brandishing a staff with two heads on the top. When had he gotten there? His yellow eyes where attempting to glare holes in her, it seemed, and she flinched back. How many more demons did this girl know? And why was she with them in the first place?

The little demon was completely ignored except for the defiant look Rin shot his way before her attention went straight back to her lord. Mizuki found her gaze caught in his once again, before he turned away dispassionately.

"Do as you wish," he said simply, leaving her feeling a little annoyed. What, didn't he care that she had probably saved Rin's life? He could have at least _acted_ a little more grateful.

The little demon questioned his decision in protest, though he sounded far more worn out about it. Perhaps he was ignored a lot, and considering he had basically suggested they just leave her and continue on with their lives, she was sure she wasn't going to listen to him much herself.

"Miss Mizuki, can you stand?" she asked her after thanking the man happily.

"Yeah, I think I can manage that," she replied with a smile. The girl's cheerfulness was addicting.

"Let's go over to the river so we can clean your arm," she suggested, and she nodded in response.

Rin took her hand to lead her despite it being covered in her blood. Not that she had really needed it, but having the girl hold on to her made her feel that she was being taken care of. She wasn't alone.

That thought made her let out a breath that felt like it had been held back since last night.

While walking, Rin introduced the small demon, an imp, now that she thought about the picture books she'd had as a kid, as Jaken, as she took his glances to mean that he was upset that she hadn't said anything about him yet. She had offered him a small smile, but he completely dismissed it and mumbled something about lousy humans, which elicited a small glare from her. No, she would not like this little thing in the slightest. She couldn't be afraid of him now as she took in his size and responses to Rin. He was like a jealous kid.

When they were nearly at the river, Mizuki jumped at the sight of a large, two-headed dragon as it grumbled out some sort of response to their approach. Rin smiled at the creature before she realized the owner of the hand in her own had stopped, and looked up with a bright smile that suddenly dispelled her fears.

"This is Ah and Un," she introduced each head in turn. "They're very nice, so please don't be afraid."

She nodded silently, unsure what to say. All at once, demons and dragons and wounds…she wasn't sure it was all going to fit in her head yet. Culture shock; that's what she had likened it to last night. Nothing was really registering right now.

Of course, that could just be because her arm hurt like hell and she was tired.

"We need to find something to wrap your arm up with," Rin voiced when nothing was said.

Mizuki looked around the area they were in. There were a few trees, the nice little river, the demon who didn't seem to be watching them but whose gaze she could swear she was feeling nonetheless…nothing good for wrapping her arm. She doubted the two demons would help.

A thought occurred to her, and she released the girl's hand to remove her backpack from her back.

"I might have something," she said quickly, and sat down heavily beside a tree.

Mizuki was feeling really tired now, but she shifted through her stuff nonetheless. She needed something to bandage this up with. She couldn't use her shirt since that was all she had to wear, and her jacket wasn't the right material for the job. There wasn't much in her bag except for her magazine and crackers, and neither of those would help.

Unless…

She flushed a deep red, sparing the man to her right a quick glance. She_ could _use her bra, since, being of the sports variety, it would make a nice strip of fabric, but that required removing her shirt to remove it, which meant being naked in front of him. And while she appreciated his features as much as the next girl would, she wasn't about to go as far as to want to be exposed in front of the man.

"Miss Mizuki, is everything alright?" Rin asked her, gently prodding her good shoulder. She shook her head quickly, attempting to dispel the blush, before giving the small girl a smile.

"I'm fine," she assured her, and then turned her attention to the girl's companions. The little imp was staring at her incredulously, while the demon beside him hardly paid her much mind, merely blinking with a bored look on his otherwise blank face to acknowledge that he had noticed her attention was directed to him.

"Umm…could you I ask you two to turn around," she requested. "I need to take my shirt off so I have something to bandage this up with…"

The imp spoke first.

"You dare order Lord Sesshomaru to do something, you insolent little human!" he barked, waving his strange staff around over his head.

"I asked nicely!" she snapped, and quickly regretted it. The shout made her head spin, making her wonder momentarily how much blood someone needed to lose before they passed out. She held a hand to her head, closing her eyes to get rid of the feeling.

"Jaken."

She looked up at the sound of the man's voice. It was the only other time he had spoken since he had asked Rin if she had been hurt. She blinked up at him in wonder, and he acknowledged her with a single nod before turning his back to them. The imp, Jaken, she reminded herself, followed suit with a small grumble, making Mizuki smile.

"Thanks," she added for good measure. He didn't say anything back, but she felt better nonetheless.

Removing her shirt was a difficult matter, as she tried to do so without moving her left arm, and found that to be impossible. Every move hurt like hell, and she was glad for the shirt being somewhat loose on her. She pulled her right arm through, bunched it up over her shoulder and managed to get her head out of it before carefully sliding it down her left arm.

She blinked at the curious eyes of Rin as she watched in amazement. It took her a moment to realize her clothing must have looked very strange to the girl.

"It's my weird clothes, huh?" she questioned with a smile.

"You do dress very strangely," she agreed matter-of-factly. "Your clothes look very cumbersome."

It was interesting to find the girl so very blunt, but considering her company was that of two demons and a dragon, she figured the girl would have had to adjust in some way or another to survive.

That aside, wiggling out of her sports bra was another matter entirely. Doing what she did with her shirt would be much harder with the fabric being tighter, which made her wish she had gone with one of her less comfortable, more normal choices. Of course, then she wouldn't have anything to use for her arm, and she didn't think the strap of her backpack would do very well in this situation. Rin didn't look as though she knew if she could help at all, though she was looking at her sympathetically.

She took a deep breath.

"_If I just think of it like a band-aid," _she thought as she carefully crossed her arms over her chest, "_then I'll do it quickly."_

The countdown went far faster than she would have liked before she flipped the article over her head, and she hissed loudly when the movement aggravated her wound about a hundred times more than she expected. She rolled into herself, cradling her arm in her lap as she rocked back and forth.

"You moved too fast!" Rin declared as she got down on her hands and knees to look up at Mizuki's face. She laughed despite the pain - gods, the girl was adorable - and smiled, though she was sure it looked far more forced than she meant.

"I'm alright," she assured her. "You think we can use this to wrap up my arm?"

Rin took the bra from her, glancing it over curiously.

"Yes," she affirmed. "Is it okay if I rip it up?"

Mizuki nodded. It wasn't like it was a big loss or anything.

She soon discovered, however, that a sports bra was a difficult thing to rip, and Mizuki didn't have the strength to get it started herself when she tried. Suddenly faced with this little obstacle, Rin jumped up with a smile and informed her that she had an idea, and walked straight over the demon standing off to the side of them.

"Lord Sesshomaru, may I ask something of you?" she questioned innocently, and Mizuki's face regained the flush she had experienced when she first thought of this whole idea with the bra.

And now he was looking at it as Rin presented the article to him, which turned the wattage of her face up about twenty more places.

Sports bra though it was, Mizuki was never so bold as to wear it alone when the situation called for it, which made her regard the clothing with a bit more of a personal touch than was meant for the object. Sure, he had absolutely no idea what it meant for a man to see a woman's bra, she was certain of that, but the idea that he was _looking at it_…

She missed the exchange between the two, and managed to get her thoughts together when he pulled one of the swords from his waist and struck it in the ground between himself and Rin. She smiled warmly before taking the fabric to one of its sides, where the thread gave easily against the blade. She was able to rip it after creating the initial damage, as she so demonstrated, and she thanked him brightly before he replaced his sword at his hip.

She found it strange that it was without a sheath, unlike his other sword, but her thoughts ended there.

Rin was surprisingly efficient for someone so young. She quickly made work of what had once been her bra, and took what was left over to the water that ran behind them. She used the wet rag to gently clean her wound, which left Mizuki hissing a whole lot more than she had wanted to.

"Sorry," Rin said apologetically.

"No, no, it's alright," Mizuki assured her once again. "I'm just not accustomed to pain much, is all."

The girl nodded in understanding, but continued her work much more softly than she had started. Mizuki gritted her teeth against the pricks of pain, and looked around for something distracting. The demon's back made for a good tool for concentration, so she focused on him as best she could.

Rin had called him Sesshomaru, she reminded herself. That was definitely an old name in her book, and rather mean sounding when she thought about how it might be written. Riho would have a better idea, since she was much better with kanji than her (the girl was like a dictionary sometimes…). He didn't look mean, though, at least, not when she thought about his interactions with the young girl working hard at her wound.

Oh, ouch. She forgot she was distracting herself from that.

Thoughts shifting back to the demon, she went back to observing. He was certainly good at keeping his word, though she couldn't say the same for the imp companion who kept glancing back before catching himself and turning forward again. Sesshomaru didn't move a muscle, his hair didn't even move, which, considering how long the silver locks were, that was quite a feat.

"_Damn," _she thought dryly. _"Makes my hair look short."_

He was easily over six foot tall, and despite what he had done, his white clothing looked absolutely pristine. The fur over his shoulder looked comfortable enough to sleep on, though she figured if she wanted to keep her head where it was, she'd refrain from ever suggesting that outside of the privacy of her own thoughts. His opposite shoulder had a much different look due to the spiked pauldron, and the way the sleeve seemed to lay flat against him suggested there was a good reason for it.

Yes, the man was damned handsome, but she had to remind herself that if the claws and green whip from earlier suggested anything, the man was as much a demon as the one he slew.

She suddenly found herself in a fit of gagging brought on by the betraying flip of her empty stomach. One of the other things she was trying to forget was that the demon that had been chasing her was very much dead, cut up like a stick of butter right before her eyes, except sticks of butter didn't have bloody entrails leaking out of them.

Rin stopped her tending of the wound in concern, and Mizuki had to push back the bile that rose in her throat so the girl wouldn't turn around and ask him for help again. The bra was embarrassing enough; she didn't want him to see her naked.

"It's okay, Rin," she assured her once again. "I'm fine, really. I just remembered how the demon…died, that's all."

"Oh," she said with a small hint of surprise, which made Mizuki feel rather childish. Rin wasn't sick from it in the slightest, and here she was, probably at least ten years older than her, and she was flipping out about it.

"You speak as though you've never seen death," Sesshomaru suddenly said from beside her. She flipped her gaze accusingly to him, only to find that he still had his back turned and her glare would hardly do much if it wasn't seen.

"Not like _that_…" she answered truthfully. What was she supposed to say? Her grandparents had died, yes, but she was only there for the funeral. All she knew about death was a grave and a shrine, not what a dead body actually looked like, let alone seen something killed.

He shifted slightly, as if he wanted to turn around, but refrained from doing so. Instead, he continued.

"It was hardly different from cutting apart an animal for food," he said with a hint of curiosity in his voice.

"They're hardly alike!" she countered quickly, though she couldn't really say if that were true. "You tore that thing apart! It's different…" She trailed off for a minute, looking away from his back and back to Rin, who looked torn between stepping into the argument or staying just as she was.

"…Don't get me wrong; I'm grateful, really I am," she said quietly. "I'm just…a little new to this, I guess you could say."

There was silence, then Sesshomaru filled it once again with his observations.

"Have you never seen demons?" he questioned her with a tone that suggested he wasn't belittling her, but rather was stating a fact. "Do you not know that you were in danger, or understand who it is you are speaking with now?"

Her gaze hardened on his back once again. This man was starting to rub her the wrong way.

"Should I fear _you_, then, Sesshomaru?" she asked instead of answering him, and deliberately ditched the formality Rin and Jaken had used in addressing him. She was not about the let him get the better of her, and she would show him just how strong she was when it came to words.

Jaken jumped on her for the missing formality, turning around in the process. She snagged her shirt, quickly hiding her chest just as Sesshomaru placed a well-aimed boot on the little imp's head, effectively obscuring his view. A short relief to her, but only until the demon himself turned on her, a look of deep curiosity reflecting in his golden eyes.

They reminded her somehow of that Inuyasha character's eyes, but colder, harder than the bright eyes of the youth she had met back in her own time.

He said nothing, so she shoved the thoughts of the dog-eared teen from her mind in favor of reminding him that she wasn't entirely weak.

"Of course you're strong," she started. "That's obvious. The way you carry yourself says a lot about you. But you haven't given me a reason to be afraid of you. You saved my life, inadvertently or not, and you were kind enough to give me a little privacy before. And Rin is entirely comfortable around you.

"I believe I can trust you. I wouldn't want to be at the other end of a battle with you, of course, but right now, I'm not on that side. I haven't given you any reason to kill me, and I don't think you're like the others, because you're not boasting about how delicious a meal I'd make. So no, I'm not the least bit afraid."

Okay, in all honestly, she was a little afraid of him. He _was_ strong. If she did anything wrong, she'd be dead in a heartbeat. His attitude made her believe she wouldn't be _played with_ either. His silence was more nerve-wracking than she wanted to believe, and what he said toward her seemed very calculated. He wasn't mindless like the other two. Oh no, this demon was very smart.

But he said nothing, merely observed her, so she turned the situation so he should have to say something, if only to keep up appearances and to keep him from asking so many questions that reminded her she was five hundred years before her time.

"Is that so strange, to not fear the one who saved your life?"

For a few moments, nothing was said. Then suddenly he made a small noise that sounded like one of resignation, and he closed his eyes and turned his back to her once again.

"I suppose it isn't so strange," he answered, and she smiled in triumph before she realized he had more to add. "That you have never encountered demons before, however, is."

And sharp to boot. He knew she was out for a change in topic, it seemed, and he wasn't going to let it go until he had a sufficient answer.

"…Yeah, I haven't exactly had any experience with demons," she answered truthfully, leaning back against the tree behind her. "Doesn't mean I wasn't smart enough to realize I was going to die back there."

"Yet you attempted to save Rin," he added, "rather than running away."

"And _not _have that on my conscience my entire life?" she bit back bitterly. "There's no way I could have just run off knowing she could die."

He was silent, apparently out of things to say for the moment, so she felt she had to continue.

"I just reacted, really," she added truthfully. "Don't ask me why; I don't think I was thinking much myself. I just know I didn't want her to die because of something I had led here. And I'm glad you're alright, Rin," she said, turning back to the girl. "I forgot to apologize for tackling you like that."

"It's alright," she answered back with a smile. "Rin's not hurt at all!"

Mizuki smiled.

"I'm glad."

It was quiet from there, leaving Rin to work in silence while Mizuki relaxed against the tree. Jaken even refrained from his mumbling, leaving the small area quiet save for the forest life around them.

Sesshomaru, for his part, was turning the wheels of his mind. This girl who was suddenly in their presence was very strange, and not just in the clothing she chose to wear. She hardly acted like a human woman; she was much more confident in herself and frighteningly manipulative, though he doubted she realized that herself. She was certainly no threat, but there was something that radiated off of her than he couldn't put his finger on. It may have been a reflection of power, but it didn't raise the same alarms in his head.

She reminded him of the woman by the side of his brother. She had that confidence that this girl possessed, and when they had first encountered one another on that night when he had chosen to follow Jaken's plan, she acted as though the fact that he was a demon was nothing to be phased about, as if she was ignorant of the danger she was in. Like the priestess, she seemed out of place. She even smelled out of place; strange scents permeated her, sharp in his nose like smoke, but unlike it in many ways, and sweet scents that smelled like fruits he'd never encountered. She smelled like the forest around her, but only as if she had been here a very short while. Even her blood smelled foreign to him.

Yes, she did not belong here somehow. Of that, he was certain.

"Thanks, Rin," the girl said quietly, interrupting his thoughts. Apparently she was done tending to her wound, though the girl sounded lethargic now.

"We should wash the blood off of your…um," Rin started, though trailed off as if she wanted the proper name for the clothing she was speaking of.

"It's called a shirt," the girl provided, and following that was the sound of her shifting through her belongings. "And I can wear my jacket until it dries."

Rin made an awed sound while he listened to the girl shift into a rather noisy piece of clothing, which sounded stiff until a strange sound echoed from it. It sounded almost as if it was tearing, though the sound was more metallic in his ears, and there was no reaction from the girl that suggested it was abnormal. When the sound ceased, she suddenly addressed him.

"I'm covered up again, so you're free to turn around," she said in a rather nonchalant tone that reminded him he was dealing with a strangely confident human. Then she added "sorry for the wait" almost like an afterthought.

He turned to find her dressed in a stiff, black fabric with long, thin sleeves and a strange, metallic line running down the center of it. She had managed to get her left arm inside of the sleeve, which made him wonder if the fabric was somehow meant to split down the metallic line, because she hadn't made a sound indicating she was in pain like she had when removing her other clothing.

She attempted to stand, aiming to assist Rin, perhaps, but found that her legs didn't have the strength in them that they had had when he had first encountered her. They collapsed under her, and her eyes widened in surprise before shifting unnaturally, until she found herself back in the position she had previously been in.

"Miss Mizuki!" Rin called worriedly, rushing to her side before flashing him a concerned look. He sighed inaudibly; he understood her concern, since the girl may have very well saved her life, but this was more than he had entertained the thought of initially.

"You've lost a lot of blood," he provided, attempting to ease Rin's concerns. She seemed to understand from there that the girl wasn't in danger, so he said nothing more, though the girl let out a strangled laugh.

"Apparently so," she mused behind her hand. Her breaths were uneven, indicating some distress, but nothing more. "You wouldn't happen to know what I need to do for that, would you?"

He assumed she was asking how to replenish her blood, so he answered accordingly.

"Water," he said simply, to which she nodded.

"Can I ask a favor?" she questioned. He wasn't sure who she was addressing, but Rin jumped in to offer her assistance. "In my bag, there's a water bottle. Could you get that for me?"

Rin blinked, confused by the girl's choice of words, but set to the task nonetheless. She produced from her bag a clear container which contained water, and handed it over to her. She smiled gratefully before removing the top with one hand and greedily consuming its contents. When it was emptied, Rin offered to get her more, though took a moment to observe the strange container in her hands.

She repeated the process once more a short while later, until finally the girl succumbed to sleep, and Rin could do nothing more for her for the time.

Sesshomaru briefly wondered what he had gotten himself into when he agreed to Rin's request to watch over the woman until she woke. He was curious; he wouldn't deny himself that. He was damned curious.

* * *

><p><strong>Sorcerousfang: …Twenty pages…I have never written twenty pages for a single chapter in my <strong>_**life**_**.**

**Sesshomaru: Took you long enough.**

**Sorcerousfang: My god, twenty pages.**

**Well, consider it a special treat since I took so long to get past the first chapter. And will you look at that? Sesshomaru shows up in chapter two. Huh.**

**I'll probably never write a chapter this long again, for future reference. Not sure, really, but **_**twenty pages**_**. That's a heck of a lot to go over with a fine-toothed comb and still miss some mistakes.**

**Anyway, I hope you liked it. I can't match up to some of the other authors I've been inspired by, but I certainly hope I've come close. It's hard to discover your own style. Tell me what you think.**

**Sesshomaru: Long.**

**Sorcerousfang: Oh, you don't count.**

**Sesshomaru: And why not?**

**Sorcerousfang: Because you're my muse, and I edit everything you say, remember?**

**Sesshomaru: …damn you.**

**Sorcerousfang: I try.**


	3. And Then You Realize

**Disclaimer: Huh. Suddenly I realize I actually **_**like**_** writing these every chapter. Gives me a starting space I didn't know I could use. Anywho, don't go nuts, but the only thing I own in here is Mizuki. I know. Your mind is officially blown.**

**Sorcerousfang: Well, with ****that insanely long**** chapter two out of the way, time to move on, I suppose. And, oh, I'm going to have fun here.**

**Sesshomaru: Does this include me suffering in some way?**

**Sorcerousfang: No. I still reserve that for that strange, on-going, one-shot collection of mine with the weird title.**

**Sesshomaru: Good. But stop using this space for advertising and get on with it. I'm bored.**

**Sorcerousfang: …You are just increasingly hard to please today, aren't you?**

**Well anyway, muse doing his muse thing aside, here's another note. Rin calling Mizuki 'Miss' is kind of the equivalent of the Japanese she would use, Mizuki-san. As I go, I'm trying to think of this story as being written in Japanese…strange, maybe, but it's a little practice to keep up with the language, since I haven't been in a class for it in more than six months, and won't be until next year. It's also fun.**

**As well, I'm going to start experimenting with something. Today is December 5****th****. 2:18 in the morning, sure, but the 5****th**** nonetheless. Time to see if having the date here to remind me every time I bring this up to work on will make me work faster.**

**And without further ado, let chapter three commence.**

* * *

><p>Mizuki shot up when she realized she had fallen asleep. Rin was asleep directly in front of her, curled into the side of the dragon as it dozed with its body wrapped protectively around her.<p>

"You're awake."

Mizuki flipped her head around to find Sesshomaru had spoken from the other side of a fire that hadn't been there the last time she remembered. Jaken was tending to it idly, though his ever-incredulous gaze was set on her intently.

"I didn't mean to fall asleep…" she admitted quietly. Night had fallen again, which meant she'd been gone for a full day. She glanced at her watch, noting that it was ten already. _"Scratch that, more than a full day…"_

"It's understandable," he replied, making her blink. Compared to his questions earlier, that sounded like he was being kind.

She looked straight at him, trying to figure out if he had an angle to this conversation. The fire reflected warmly in his eyes as he stared right back, unphased by her direct gaze. He blinked, apparently not understanding her defensiveness, so she forced herself to relax. Maybe she was just overreacting because she had just woken up.

"Thanks for your help," she said quietly. "I owe you one."

He shook his head minutely.

"I am merely repaying you for aiding Rin," he answered. "There is no debt on your part."

She blinked in surprise. She hadn't really thought of it like that before, though she supposed now it was rather obvious. Of course he should have done something to pay her back; it was only proper. And he wasn't like the other demons. At least, that's was she remembered having concluded earlier.

Perhaps she could use that debt to her advantage, if she treaded carefully on it.

Nodding with understanding, Mizuki glanced around the small camp. It looked as though they were accustomed to this sort of setting, if the way each of them seemed to settle into the area surrounding them was anything to go by. It just looked natural for Sesshomaru to be sitting against a tree, for Rin to be sleeping soundly with a dragon of all things, and for Jaken to be fussing over a fire and the fish that were stuck up on sticks around…

Wait…fish?

Apparently Sesshomaru had noticed her stomach's antics, though she was sure it had not made a sound while it tightened in anticipation of the meal, because the next thing that registered in her mind was his voice.

"Rin believed you would be hungry," he explained simply, watching her gaze travel from the meal to his ward and back again.

"…You don't mind?" she questioned after a moment before it kicked in that of course it was okay because he'd just said it was for her.

"I don't eat human food," he assured her.

She froze on that statement for a moment. The man was a demon, of course. Why would he eat stuff like udon or fish or rice? She couldn't help but wonder what he _did_ eat, though…and 'human food' suddenly made her uneasy.

She swallowed back the lump in her throat as she thought about those words.

Shoving the train of thought to the very back of her mind was a little more difficult than she would have admitted freely, but locked away nonetheless, Mizuki focused on the fish around the fire. Never had she eaten fish cooked right over a fire, and she wasn't sure about their taste. Her stomach gave one long grumble, pleading with her that it didn't matter _what_ it tasted like: _food was food!_

She carefully pushed herself up, wincing at the aching feeling of her muscles and the stiffness of her left arm, and stood for a moment to make sure she could stay standing. There was a short feeling of lightheadedness that made her unsure of her footing, but the moment passed, leaving her feeling strong enough to walk the short distance to the fire.

She sat down carefully between Jaken and Sesshomaru, leaving a wider breadth between herself and the latter than that of the distance from the imp. She gingerly took one of the sticks from around the fire and plucked it out of the ground. A few blows to cool it off and a hesitant bite deemed it edible, and she relaxed into the feeling of having some weight in her stomach.

While the fish was no delicacy, it wasn't horribly plain, either. She wasn't sure what to liken it to other than tasting a campfire, but it wasn't a burnt taste. Rin certainly knew how to take care of food in a pinch.

Her thoughts drawing back to the little girl, Mizuki was left to wonder what her purpose was with these three creatures. She must have had some reason to be with them. Sesshomaru might have impressed her, what with the way she looked at him, and she may have followed him from there, though why he, a demon, would allow such a thing escaped her. Demons and humans weren't supposed to mix well. Demons _ate_ humans, if her first two encounters were anything to go by.

That left Sesshomaru as a bit of an enigma to her.

That wasn't to say she knew anything about demons. She was going off of myths and fairytales for what they were worth now. She really only knew that demons were supposed to be stronger than humans, come in all kinds of grotesques forms, and they had a taste for human flesh. Sesshomaru didn't seem to fit that space of the puzzle perfectly. He was _pretty_. If she wasn't intimidated by him, she'd soak up the sight while she could because he was just that good-looking. Oh, no, she wasn't entertaining _those_ kind of thoughts about him; she'd just as soon go home and forget they'd ever met. He was just a kind of pretty in a human she knew she'd never see again.

Okay, not human. He just had the form of one.

She bit into the second fish, reminding herself that her original thoughts had been about Rin and why she was here. She was just so innocent and cute! She couldn't have pinned her for being with a couple of demons if she hadn't seen it with her own eyes.

She glanced back at Sesshomaru while she chewed silently. His gaze was resting on the fire until a moment later, when he suddenly drew his gaze up to her. She looked away quickly, focusing on her fish for a moment before swallowing.

"…Can I ask why she's with you?" she asked in curiosity when her mouth was free. Her voice sounded almost loud in the silence, making her duck her head a little as if something were going to notice her unless she hid.

"…It's of her own choosing," he replied vaguely. Jaken gave him a long look from her other side, as if he had wanted a better answer himself, but he was ignored by him. Perhaps it was a common explanation.

"She seems very happy," she commented when nothing else came to mind. "And quite fond of you."

"Is that so," he said rather than questioned, though she nodded nonetheless.

The three fell to silence once again, so Mizuki took another fish to satisfy her stomach. She exchanged looks with Jaken when she did, causing him to harrumph something unintelligible and making her frown in displeasure. She'd only said three words to him, and he was already on his way to the far side of the annoying spectrum.

"I haven't done anything to you, you little toad," she argued in a hushed tone. "Mind filling me in on why you hate me already?"

He gave her a look that said she should already know.

"You interrupted our day and made us stop for you and your stupid wound!" he piped hotly. "If you hadn't brought that demon here, none of this would have happened!"

"So your daily stroll was cancelled," she said around the fish in her mouth, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "Excuse me for running blindly for my life, Oh Great One. And tone it down a few notches; I don't want to wake her up after everything she did for me."

"You…you…!" he stumbled.

"My name is Mizuki, since you seem to have so much trouble remembering."

"You're insufferable!" he squawked in as hushed a tone as he could while still managing to get his anger across. Mizuki just rolled her eyes and returned to eating her fish as he glared daggers at her. Annoying, yes, but the way he got angry could be rather amusing if she needed a distraction. She tucked that thought away for future reference.

She found herself thirsty when she finished her third fish, so she tossed her sticks into the fire and pushed herself up off of the ground with her good hand. Pausing on a trace thought, she turned to Sesshomaru and bowed slightly where she stood.

"Thanks for the meal," she told him, and quickly returned to her task of retrieving her forgotten water bottle.

Sesshomaru said nothing to the gesture of gratitude, merely watched as she settled back against the tree carefully and drank from the strange container, her gaze directed elsewhere.

He had already concluded that this woman was out of place in this land long before she had fallen asleep earlier. The questions he asked had been meant to alleviate his thoughts about her, and her answers only seemed to add to the strangeness that surrounded her. Hesitation in her responses suggested lies, or quickly thought-up answers, and that she was far more ignorant than she wanted to let on.

But she was hardly stupid. As careful as his questions had been, her answers were just as calculated, if only on the spur of the moment. Again, he found her manipulative. A sort of manipulation that came as naturally to her as breathing, because he sensed nothing of malice behind it.

Regardless, though, he would be careful not to fall into her manipulation unwillingly.

Strange as she was, the woman was still human. When he came to the aid of Rin, she had been as terrified as any human should be at the prospect of death at the hands of a demon, if not more. She had snapped out of it quickly, though, perhaps due to Rin's tending of her. Her reaction to Jaken when she'd first noticed him had been one of disbelief, but just a few moments before she had sat closer to the imp rather than himself, despite her evident distaste toward his attitude. Obviously she was cautious, but no longer entirely fearful of the ones around her. Either she was brave and simply adapted well, or it wasn't registering with her just who was around her, and he was leaning toward the latter.

It was as if she had been deprived of the knowledge of demons all together, he could go so far as to conclude, or had never been informed of the dangers of them. Humans simply didn't reject what they had been taught because of a tending to a minor wound and the offering of a few fish. Not one of her age. The older they got, the more they felt what they had learned was the right way, and the_ only_ right way. No, she should have been much more timid, less accepting, more suspicious. She should be watching over children and a home, not dressed in a ridiculous fashion and toting around strange items.

But her scent, strange as it was, deemed her untouched, leaving him to wonder where she must come from if she had not been wedded off already to fulfill the base instinct to further their population. It was a strange deviation from the creatures he knew as humans. Not that he would attest to understanding them to any extent; they had a tendency to do things that brought no beneficial or concrete outcome. Useless actions he would never understand, like Rin picking flowers. Kind gesture though it was meant to be, and surely he could claim it was because she was a child that she did it, but entirely pointless to him. She'd pick flowers for him, but end up holding them herself, and discarding them when they wilted. To him, they served no real purpose.

But a deviation she was, and he wanted to figure out what made her such a strange human, if only to fulfill his curiosity in her.

And thus he continued what he had started before.

"It isn't simply that you have not had much experience with demons," he said suddenly, looking straight into the strange blue eyes that were suddenly upon him, "but that you know nothing of them. It is as if you were sheltered from the harsher edges of human life, and yet you don't act as though you were raised this way. What is it, then, that deprived you of such knowledge, girl?"

Shocked out of her thoughts by the sound of his voice suddenly echoing in her ears, Mizuki had absolutely no idea what he said until it clicked when her mind caught up with her ears. And then she was somewhat angry again by his insinuations and his damned logical mind. She was glad he wasn't trying to eat her, but did he have to keep up the annoying questions? It wasn't like she was going to stick around _too_ long. She'd be going home as soon as she got back to the well, which she was sure wasn't that far. The only problem was getting there, and she had been working up a good solution in her head for that.

Until he interrupted her.

"Mizuki works just fine, thank you," she reminded him in lieu of an answer for the moment, annoyed that he hadn't seemed to remember that she had a name. What, did he and Jaken have the same memory issues or was it just a demon thing? "And demons just aren't that big a problem where I'm from. Stories to scare kids with, mostly," she added honestly.

"Is this land you come from holy, then?" he questioned, though to her he sounded as though he were being sarcastic, like he already knew the answer to that.

She chose not to lie, then.

"No, not to my knowledge," she answered, and watched to see if his expression made any indication that she had given the answer he hadn't expected. There was nothing, though; he remained just as straight-faced as before.

She had read him, he realized as he watched her expression reflect disappointment. She had figured out that he already knew that her scent reflected nothing of a holy land, though probably not in such terms. He had schooled his expression, so it must be that she read something in his voice. This woman was certainly observant.

"…So what possessed you to leave your home, if it was so safe from demons that you knew nothing of their dangers?" he asked after a moment of reflection on his part.

Mizuki glanced down at her chest where she knew the pendant was resting.

"…I was curious," she replied after some thought. "Home can be…boring, really. I found something new, and _boom_. Just like that, I end up here. Can't say I _expected_ a few demons to want to roast me over a fire, but life tends to throw those little details at you like that.

"In retrospect, I suppose it really isn't so bad; demons are higher on the food chain, like humans are to fish. It just works that way. If I really think about it, I should be more afraid of what a human might want to do to me. I'd rather die for the sake of a being's survival than selfish desires. Course, that doesn't change the fact that I don't _want _to die, so I'm pretty sure my mind wouldn't be so rational in either situation…but yeah. Curiosity is about the only thing I can amount it to. I tend to…let myself get a little carried away when I become interested in something."

Sesshomaru took a moment to think about the last time he'd actually listened to someone ramble on uncertainly, and came up with nothing he could definitively recall aside from Rin's hesitation when she first began to speak. He found it an interesting insight, however, what she considered rational. And she wasn't trying to lie to herself, it seemed, if her admittance to not being so quick to think rationally in a life or death situation was any indication. She seemed to think much differently than a normal human, but how or why he was…

It clicked, suddenly, the reason she could think the way she did. She was like Rin; they both held no particular prejudice against demons, if any at all. Rin knew the dangers of them, of course, but she would not judge based on the idea that any creature was this sort of thing or another. Even with the boy Kohaku, whose mind was captured by the demon he desired nothing but the demise of and nearly caused her a second trip to death's arms, she held nothing but concern for. But he had figured it was because Rin was a child, and human life hadn't been very kind to her. It hadn't been impressed upon her that demons were bad, humans good, and nothing in between mattered because those lines couldn't be blurred. All she saw when she found him that day in the woods was someone wounded and alone like her, and she couldn't leave someone alone if she thought of them like herself.

This woman, however, was no such child. Granted, he had no idea of her past or the impressions left on her from it, but it was obvious now that she hadn't been taught that line between humans and demons in a realistic point of view. 'Stories to scare kids with,' she had said. That was it; she didn't find the danger real, because to her it didn't truly exist yet, and thus she didn't view him as a dangerous being who wasn't human, but simply as a being stronger than herself. Logically, she ran from the ogre and the one she claimed to have escaped from before because they wanted her as their next meal, but not from him, because he did not have such a reason to extinguish her life.

Unbiased.

"What is your opinion, then?"

She looked up at him with an expression that told him she did not understand what he was referring to.

"On this world you found yourself in when you left your homeland," he elaborated. "On demons which you've never known. I am curious."

She blinked, surprised, it seemed, by his questions. Then she looked up toward the sky, searching out the stars as if they held some answer she could give before speaking.

"…It's amazing," she concluded, voice soft as though she had only just discovered her answer. "And frightening. I don't know anything about this place, and I could die if I take a wrong turn. I want to go home."

She trailed off for a long moment, letting silence consume them. Sesshomaru said nothing, waiting for her to find the words she was still searching for.

"But…the quiet moments…" she continued uncertainly, "the quiet moments where I can sit and think leave me almost speechless. It's beautiful, the trees, the sky, this river. Back home isn't like this. I can't see so many stars where I'm from. To me, this world is amazing. If I didn't have to, and I knew I could be safe, I don't think I'd want to return home.

"Except I'm a walking gourmet for demons."

At this, her voice turned somewhat sour, and she gave a roll of her eyes as if the prospect of it now was simply an annoyance to her.

"Nothing against you," she started, " I understand you're different from the others. I'd say more civilized, but I don't know what being civil means to a demon. Demons…well, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't scared. You should have been there when the second one got to me. Even I didn't know I could scream that loudly. My throat still kind of hurts.

"But I figure if there's some like them and some like you, then it's kind of like humans. There are those you get along with, those you avoid, and the ones that are bat-shit insane. Ah…sorry. Slip of the tongue, there."

He merely raised a brow at her reasoning and quick apology. Finding her language slip into something he'd think more to hear from a certain hanyou's mouth was unrealistically entertaining, and he wondered if that had to do with her simply being a woman, or something entirely different. Regardless, this reasoning of hers proved it; she was completely unbiased when it came to the relations between humans and demons, and didn't seem to truly realize how strange she sounded to his ears.

He couldn't imagine where she could have come from that seeing forests and stars as much as he did on a daily basis was a strange occurrence. He'd been many places in his life, and nothing short of a cave could have blotted out so many stars that she would be left in such awe of them. She had the same thoughts about so many trees, which eliminated a forest as being part of her home. Aside from which, she seemed completely unfamiliar with wooded areas, the way she glanced at the shadows that surrounded them.

So where could she live that she knew neither stars nor trees?

He decided not to voice that question.

"You think strangely, for a human," he mused instead with a hint of curiosity in his voice.

"So I've heard," she said somewhat bitterly. "What else is new?"

"…Your speech patterns," he answered nonchalantly. "The phrases you use, the words; some I've never encountered, though what you say around them gives enough clues as to what you are referring to."

She blinked.

"…That was actually meant to be rhetorical," she muttered, struggling to find something to say in response. She wasn't going to tell him she was actually from the future, not that he would actually believe her anyway, but what _could_ she say to explain the way she talked? That it was just normal back home?

…Yeah, that might work.

"It's what I grew up hearing, I guess," she explained. "Never really thought of it as strange, but then that's what I was surrounded with."

She took a sip from her water bottle, as if to put an end to the conversation.

Mizuki was a little worried about saying too much about home to him. Not that she expected him to suddenly flip on her and decide to travel five-hundred years in the future and try to take over the modern world; that was just stupid. No, she was more concerned about herself. The more he talked, the more real he seemed, and that would make it just that much harder to forget about her trip to the past when she went home. It would give her more to slip on, make it harder to come up with some excuse as to why she had disappeared for more than a day, not to mention come up with an explanation for her arm. She'd have to do something about that, too.

She couldn't say conversing with a demon _wasn't_ strange - it certainly wasn't something she'd ever dreamed she'd do one evening - but somehow this almost casual conversation was making her comfortable, like the first time she and Kimura had met. He had managed to rub her the wrong way while being fun to talk to at the same time, which had spawned a friendship she hadn't expected back then.

This time, however, she wasn't looking for that friendship, and didn't think it wise to search for it in the man across from her. The more she spoke, the more comfortable she became, which was good and bad at the same time. Good that she wasn't scared out of her mind, bad that she was getting familiar with this kind of setting. She needed to go home. There was absolutely no way she could continue being here. Not only was she sure she wouldn't survive without someone's protection, there was the underlying fact that she was five-hundred years in the _past_, far enough back that, if she messed anything up, she might totally screw up the future. That's what they call a paradox, right?

She gingerly touched the spot on her chest where the pendant lay warm against her skin. Her first intentions had been just to get the shouting out of her head, but somehow it had landed her in feudal Japan. She wasn't sure what would happen next. Obviously the necklace was…resonating, or something like that, with her. The song still echoed if she concentrated on it, and it still felt like a comfort around her neck. But it wouldn't do anything else, at least, not to her knowledge. She had no idea how to work it, and didn't really believe she had the mind to do it. If she suddenly had some strange abilities…well, she certainly couldn't say none of this had happened, now could she?

An idea came to mind, then, and she found herself thinking back on how she would manage her way back to the well. Maybe she could use whatever acquaintanceship they had formed through conversing to her advantage.

"Hey," she called to Sesshomaru quietly, keeping her gaze on the fire. She waited until she believed she had his attention despite his silence before she continued. "Do you know anything about the Bone Eater's Well?"

Sesshomaru narrowed his eyes at her sudden question. For someone who knew nothing of the world around her, asking about something like the Bone Eater's Well was rather specific. He was concerned for a moment that perhaps he had already fallen into some sort of manipulation at her hands. Was her ignorance a farce? And if so, how had she managed to escape his senses? Was it that echo of power he believed he had sensed on her, or something else?

"…Why do you ask?" he questioned back, allowing his tone to express some of his own caution, half to judge her reaction, half to warn her that he was aware of her game should she be playing one.

She swallowed back the lump that had settled in her throat again, trying, and probably failing, to maintain her composure. She had suddenly felt a sort of prick in the air, like static had built up and released itself somewhere around her chest. It was frightening, like the chill down your spine when you think someone is watching you from the shadows.

When she built up the courage to look him in the eye, she came to some realization that the static-like feeling was coming from him. She just knew, right then, that he was weighing her in as a threat.

"…I need to find it," she explained when his sharp gaze seemed to waver. "If I find it, I can get home."

Sesshomaru felt confusion wrap itself around his mind. Ignorant she was, and yet she knew of the well, something old, a tale from a single village that not many humans outside of it would know. Courageous enough to leave her home and venture out into a world she knew nothing of, and yet she shook merely at his gaze where once she claimed she wasn't frightened of him. She was contradicting herself.

He knew immediately that she was trying to ask for his assistance in this matter, that she wanted some form of protection until she got to where she would consider herself safe. But this made no sense. Why ask to be taken to the well if she could ask to be taken back to her village? She claimed she could find her way home from there, home to a place where few stars shine and trees appear scarce, and yet the only village he would believe she could safely return to from there would be the one near the tree his hanyou sibling had been pinned to, and that place fit into no such category.

…No. She had said if she found the well, she could _get_ home, not necessarily that she could _find her way _home. Did this mean she was cursed until she made contact with it? Was _that _the energy he felt from her? But how, and for what reasons? Why not say just that in the first place?

The curiosity that he had succumbed to was growing, despite his efforts to relieve it. He wanted answers, not more questions to be raised. Curiosity was one of those double-edged swords; it could get one in trouble if they poked their nose too far into it, but could never quite be relieved if one didn't. With this woman, he wasn't sure where he needed to draw that line just yet, between just enough and too far. It was toying with him. Just when he got a little closer, the answers stepped two extra paces back.

He shoved the annoyance of his misdirected interests to the back of his mind, and returned to holding her gaze without much to be read in his own. Strange as her question was, there was an honest glimmer in her wavering look, and he scented nothing of a lie. She was being appropriately cautious of the information she gave away. Smart on her part.

"…You presume I would offer assistance in this matter, as payment for your actions concerning Rin?" he questioned smoothly, watching as she seemed to relax.

Mizuki opened her mouth to answer simply, but thought better of it, and found herself biting the inside of her cheek. If this was going to work for her, she needed to answer carefully, and a blunt 'yes' wouldn't get her anywhere she wanted to go.

"…Perhaps partly due to that," she answered slowly after a moment. "I assume you wouldn't do something without a reason, anyway."

"And you believe that aiding you with your injury and offering protection as you rested is not enough."

She glanced at Rin's sleeping form, suddenly wondering if their conversing might wake her.

"…No, it's plenty," she said quietly, watching the child's chest rise and fall evenly. "More than enough, really."

Sesshomaru raised an eyebrow. That was an unexpected reply.

"But…" she continued after a moment, "I'm under the impression that you did it more for her than for me."

His other eyebrow soon followed suit.

Jaken wanted to interject, but he clamped his mouth shut in the silence that followed in fear that Sesshomaru would punish him for another outburst. The woman was so…infuriating! Had she no respect for the presence she was in? To admit her ignorance and yet dare to speak so freely with him!

And yet he couldn't deny his amazement at the speed at which she kept up with his lord. She'd even surprised him, her last question seeming to leave him with nothing to say. He didn't like her, and he would be damned if he was going to be undermined by yet another human, but he had to acknowledge her finer points, strange as they were.

He was glad he stayed silent when he found a small smirk grace his lord's lips. Nothing good ever came of such a smile, not from this man, and he was sure he would have been met with an untimely death had he succumbed to his feelings of anger.

"How perceptive of you," he said with an eloquent humor lacing his words. "I'm surprised you see your situation so clearly."

"I'm in a place I'm unfamiliar with," she retorted with a soft snort. "I have to be realistic, or I may well lose my head."

"Tell me, then," he continued, his tone not quite so humorous now, "what you've read of your situation."

Mizuki waited long enough to give him a quick glare, annoyed by his belittling of her. He may have Rin with him, but it seemed his view of humans left much to be desired.

"Simple," she started, "I either get home, or die, and I refuse the second option. I've been lucky so far, escaping from the first, running into Rin and consequently you the second time, but third time's the charm, or so the saying goes, so what's to say I'll survive on my own, not to mention even find my way back to the well, being as that I'm lost. And here I am, sitting across from someone who could guarantee my safety if I can find a way to get said person to agree to help me out. My two options from there are pointing out that, rather than doing a favor for Rin, you actually do one for me, and if not, I fall to option two."

"Your option two, then…?" he questioned, suddenly aware of a second angle she claimed to have.

Mizuki frowned as she looked down at the place on her chest she had been studying earlier before taking a deep breath. She fished the pendant out from beneath her collar, revealing it to him with a sudden look of determination.

"Option two is to offer you this in exchange for your aid."

Sesshomaru's eyes widened imperceptively. There. _That_ was where the power he felt was centered, in that tiny pendant she held in her hand. What was this girl in possession of?

"I honestly don't know how to use it," she admitted, the look of determination still hard in her eyes. "But I know it can do something. They say it grants powers to the person who bears it, that it was passed down through the generations of a family before it was lost. I can feel it, hear a voice in it that sings; believe me, I know it's real. But when I get home, I won't have any use for it. There's no reason for me to have it if I have no use for it, let alone if I don't even understand how it works, so I'll give it to you. I think you'll have better luck with it than me, anyway."

Hopefully the Higurashi famliy wouldn't miss it too much…

Sesshomaru looked at the necklace thoughtfully. It granted power? A tempting agreement for any demon who sought to increase their power, and Sesshomaru was no exception to that. He, however, sought to increase his _own _power, not gain it with an outside force to give credit to.

But she was offering this to him as payment for such a simple task. They weren't even that far from the well; just a couple of hours, and they'd be standing before it. Why was a girl who knew nothing about the artifact she held in possession of such a thing? She could understand it held some power, but she would throw it away as if it was useless to her? Perhaps it was, just as she had said. Or, perhaps, it was already helping her, and she didn't realize it. It might explain why she was able to escape from two demons when it was obvious she had not the strength to take on even a small one.

"I have no use for it," he replied honestly. He refused to have aid in his quest for power. If he accepted it, it would only be false power, and he'd truly have fallen low were he to believe it was his own. This was no different from an offer he'd received some time before, in the form of a few jewels with far more power than this pendant held.

The determination she had suddenly vanished, making him blink. Ah, right, this had been her only other tactic, and he had dug the foundation from under it.

It wasn't as if he truly wished to help the woman; she meant nothing to him, and he'd already rid himself of any debt he may have owed her for aiding Rin in his absence. But the curiousness he found himself plagued with at times in the past was suddenly flaring again like no time he could remember, and he had an innate desire to relieve it in some way. The questioning didn't do nearly enough to quell it, and the addition of this artifact served to effectively wipe the proverbial slate clean.

Part of him wanted to squash his betraying mind under his thumb, but a stronger part of him was pushing him to _learn_. He was aware that this amount of interest was strangely absurd for him. This should be _wrong_; she was simply a human wandering lost. Strange, maybe, but she wasn't anything more. However out of the ordinary it felt, though, he found that he was having no trouble dismissing it. Why?

He mentally shook his head. It didn't matter, he decided. There was one way to dismiss this strangeness altogether, and that was to part from her.

"However…" he started, closing his eyes in thought for a moment. "However, the well is not far. I suppose one extra act for your deed is not unwarranted."

He was almost surprised by the look he received back. Her mouth had opened on words unsaid, and blue eyes glinted with a moistness that might be tears if they had taken to tracing lines down her face. The corners of her lips turned up a moment later, a relieved breath passing between them, as if she had been holding it in.

"…Thank you," she finally said, dipping her head in what he believed to be an improvised bow. "This means a lot to me."

"I would imagine keeping one's life to mean as such," he replied coolly.

Mizuki nodded, unable to chase the smile from her face.

/./././././

To say the first hour wasn't awkward would be an understatement.

Mizuki had drifted off to sleep again after their conversation ended last night, and didn't wake until Jaken decided a little whack on the head with his staff was the perfect way to rouse her. Needless to say, it wasn't Sesshomaru who punished the little imp. Mizuki was not a morning person, and a headache had already wound its way into her head, more than likely due to her blood loss, and his staff was in no way helpful.

When she was done, Rin was pointedly chiding Jaken for being unkind, Mizuki was leaning against a tree to get rid of the dizzy feeling that had come back, and Sesshomaru was acting as though nothing had transpired, though he had been the one to rob Mizuki of the imp's staff, and she would forever swear he had been amused.

After Mizuki could walk in a straight line once again, and a quick change back into her shirt since the cool night had given way to a warmth appropriate for August and the shirt had long since dried, they had set off without another word. Rin didn't ask where they were going, but after nothing was said from either the humiliated imp nor from their imposing leader, the child had taken to drilling Mizuki with innocent questions.

Or they had been innocent, until Rin asked her if she was all alone.

Mizuki had inferred that she meant to ask if she had family, but she hesitated to answer when she realized that for Rin to be with Sesshomaru probably meant that she didn't have any family of her own to return to. She asked again, looking as innocent as an ideal child should, which prompted her to finally answer.

"No," she said with a strained smile. "My parents are back at home. I don't always get along with them, though, but you can't choose your family."

"Rin was by herself until Lord Sesshomaru saved her," she explained, smiling despite what that should have meant to her.

"He saved you, huh?" she questioned with a more genuine smile. It was a good thought, to think that a demon had saved a human child. The fact that the child was speaking in third person had an added effect as well.

"Yep!" she cheered, raising a small hand into the air as if to emphasis how great his deed had been. "Now Rin's not alone anymore."

She had to laugh a little. Rin was adorable, even in her present setting. Riding on the back of a dragon with an imp and a demon for company, she just contrasted everything perfectly. It was almost too perfect, in a way.

"So is your mom pretty? Does she have strange eyes, too? How about your dad?"

Mizuki shook her head, finding she couldn't suppress the smile. No sense in trying anymore; there was no way with Rin shooting so many questions off.

"Well, I don't think my mom's _that_ pretty. She's kind of average, if you ask me. My dad's the same. Nothing remarkable about either of them, I'm afraid, including the eye color. I'm the only one in my family with it."

Rin let out a silent 'wow' before jumping right in with her opinion.

"Rin thinks you're pretty, Miss Mizuki," she commented. "Even if you dress strangely."

"Oh, there are definitely prettier girls out there, believe me," she dismissed the compliment quickly. "I'm really not anything special."

"Really?" she gasped, as if the prospect was hard to believe. Then she turned to Jaken, who had taken to ignoring their conversation as best he could. "What do you think, Master Jaken? Do you think Miss Mizuki is pretty, or do you think there are prettier people?"

She wasn't quite sure she wanted an opinion from the creature who had decided abuse was a fine way to wake someone up, and even if he hadn't, the prospect was still very, very strange.

"Why are you asking me, girl?" he barked, flashing the two of them an indignant look.

"Fine, I'll ask Lord Sesshomaru," she pouted, raising her head to look directly at the back of the man before them.

"Ah, no, it's alright, Rin!" Mizuki said quickly, trying to push back the heat crawling up her neck. Oh, gods, if she asked _him… "_Really. I'll take your word for it."

She gave her a strange look, not understanding the reason for her protest.

"Are you alright, Miss Mizuki?" she questioned after a moment. "Your face is red."

A slightly nervous laugh escaped her despite her efforts, and she sighed in resignation. Might as well explain it a little, if she really didn't understand.

"I'm alright, Rin," she started, glancing quickly between the girl and the demon, who made no indication that he was even listening to them. "It's just that, if someone asks a guy if someone looks pretty, it can be a little embarrassing. You get this weird little feeling in your stomach, and your face gets all red."

"Then why didn't it get all red when I asked Master Jaken?"

Darn the girl for being deceptively perceptive under that cute exterior.

"Well…" she hesitated, looking at the imp as though he might give her an idea. She couldn't very well say it was because Sesshomaru was handsome and the imp hardly held a match to him, let alone a candle, because that would make her even more red. Definitely counterproductive. She captured a good idea when she looked up at the staff towering over him.

"Because I'm still mad at him for this morning," she finished.

Rin nodded with an 'oh,' allowing Mizuki to relax a bit more in knowing that the girl was going to move on to another subject.

…Until she heard a soft sound from the front of the little group that sounded like a well concealed snort of amusement.

"I heard that," she called up to him in an annoyed tone before she clamped her mouth shut. She'd just reacted the way she would have to Kimura whenever he made a snarky remark, and that was defiantly _not _the way she should be speaking with a demon like the one in front of her.

"You're quick," he commented, and she assumed he was referring to the answer she gave to Rin.

"Is that a bad thing?" she asked, emboldened by his tone. Apparently she wasn't as out of line as she thought she was, because he made no indication that she'd crossed any line.

"No," came his light answer. "It is simply unusual to find such instinct in a human."

A crooked frown was her reaction, and she quickened her steps until she was in pace with him, a bit of a feat with a stride of his length. He gave her a slightly raised eyebrow in response, but said nothing.

"And how many humans do you actually know?" she questioned pointedly, staring him in the eyes as well as she could from her angle.

That rare smirk graced his lips for a moment, warning Mizuki that he was about to prove just how quick he was, too.

"Simply observing is enough to come to such a conclusion," he remarked, giving her the distinct impression that she was being belittled.

She gave him the same look that had crossed her features before.

"Well, you shouldn't assume," she reprimanded in a softer tone. "Just because some people are idiots doesn't mean everyone is."

She was able to hold his gaze for a few moments before she lost what nerve she had suddenly come up with. What was with her? It wasn't like he was trying to kill her. Granted, they shouldn't be on familiar terms, and some of her statements were rather bold for being directed toward someone she'd known for less than a day, but she shouldn't be so nervous around him with the way he talked back to her. While she knew he was on a level of strength far beyond what she could imagine, he had given her no reason to believe that she would find her death by him.

"True enough," he replied without much inflection, drawing her gaze back up to him.

He gave her a strange sense that he'd been listening in on her internal conflict, allowing her to catch his gaze once more. It was difficult to find much emotion in his amber eyes, but the way he'd been speaking led her to believe something must exist beyond them, even if they didn't reflect much of what might bubble beneath his straight countenance.

She was reminded once more of the golden gaze that had glared with such intensity at her back at the Higurashi Shrine. Compared to the eyes of the teen, this man's were far more expressionless, even if they were the same strange hue. She couldn't tell if they were cold or simply indifferent, but they brought her back to her encounter with the two from the shrine nonetheless.

Sesshomaru blinked, having some difficulty trying to figure out why the girl beside him jumped from annoyed to nervous to curious in a matter of a few exchanges. Annoyed and nervous, he could understand; she'd displayed both the night previous, after all, as reactions to similarly directed comments. His confusion lay in her change to curiosity, and why her eyes didn't seem to be gazing into his own so much as gazing _at _his own. While that might account for her being less nervous than a moment before, it didn't truly explain why she was so interested. Granted, the color that lined them may simply be as strange as her own to her, but there was a distinct glint of recognition behind them that struck him as strange. Surely they had never met before.

"You seem intent on discovering something," he commented as his gaze shifted back to the path in front of him.

She seemed to jump slightly, but swallowed back the reaction quickly, as if she had been shaken out of a reverie that didn't mean much to her.

"You reminded me of someone, actually," she mused, looking to the sky and rubbing her left arm absently. "I met someone with eyes like yours. The same color, but different everyway else, really."

His steps slowed minutely.

"Come to think of it," she continued, "he looked a little like you, too, just a bit more rough around the edges, I guess you could say. He didn't have any of the markings you have, and he wasn't wearing anything fancy. Just red."

The image he had formed in his head had suddenly taken a much more obvious shape. Had she actually run into _him _first? If that were true, then why had she run?

"Oh!" she suddenly exclaimed, half out of pain because she'd rubbed her arm just a little too hard, and half because she had just remembered something important. She gave the offending limb a good grimace, a fair indication of how she still felt about the severity of the wound she'd received, before continuing thoughtfully, "I guess he was a demon, though he didn't look like it while he was wearing that bandana on his head. There were dog ears under it, and I'll swear to it on my grandparents' graves that they moved like a real dog's should."

Sesshomaru stopped.

"Inuyasha."

The name rolled off of his tongue with a touch of bitterness that surprised Mizuki more than the idea that he knew who she was speaking of. She came to a halt herself, confusion and amazement fighting for purchase on her features while her heart pounded in a sort of fear that was ahead of the other two emotions in their battle. Jaken and the dragon stopped behind them, Rin gazing on in curiosity while the imp's mouth dropped.

"…You know him?" she questioned cautiously, suddenly feeling that wave of electricity she'd noticed before from him. Did it mean he was angry?

There was a long moment where nothing but the sounds of the forest around them penetrated the suffocating silence before the demon composed himself.

"…My sire was his as well," he replied coldly. "Nothing more."

"So you're half-brothers…" she surmised aloud carefully. No wonder there were so many similarities between them. "You two…don't get along, I take it."

"It seems your quickness isn't simply a fluke," he commented by way of answering. The hint of humor in his other comments of similar mocking tone wasn't present this time, leaving her feeling cold.

"…I'll keep him from being a subject, then," she concluded, nodding gravely to herself.

Sesshomaru gave her a long look, sensing her uncertainty. While the girl was by no means very polite, she was courteous where it counted, which spoke volumes of her feelings concerning her predicament. He wondered briefly what she would be like when entirely comfortable with her surroundings; clearly now she was fighting off fear with familiarity, trying to manipulate herself into feeling safe in an environment she'd had yet to adapt to.

In a rare display of courtesy from himself, Sesshomaru closed his eyes briefly before attempting to calm her nerves.

"You have no need to believe you've angered me," he said calmly, watching as her countenance took on a relieved air. "You couldn't have known of our relation."

She offered him a soft smile.

"Thanks," she said quietly. "I appreciate you telling me."

Whether she was referring to him speaking of their relation to each other or of the fact that he wasn't angry with her, he wasn't sure, but the soft smile on her face was something he'd never quite experienced directed at himself, and never once did he believe he would encounter such a look on the face of a mortal woman. It was as if she had suddenly shown years of experience in her features, and he reminded himself that the woman in front of him seem to have a natural talent for manipulation, and that that look may well be a very practiced one.

Real or fake, though, it certainly would have given a normal man the impression that he'd done the greatest of deeds.

It wasn't long after the conclusion of their conversation before they found themselves passing the large god tree marred by a scar on its massive trunk. Sesshomaru's gaze rested on it briefly, but nothing changed of his features aside from that. Mizuki found her steps suddenly rushed with excitement, and had to check herself to keep from plowing ahead of Sesshomaru. She didn't want to be rude; it was plainly obvious that he was the leader, and she had already taken to walking beside a man she was hardly an equal to. Best she show him a bit of respect, especially since she would never see him again after she passed back through the well. Interesting as he was, she had no intention of returning to this time. Her curiosity had been more than satisfied, if not a little wounded.

They passed into a clearing where planted right in the middle was the lonely well she'd come out of the night before. Sesshomaru stopped several feet away while she continued forward until her hands met the wood, and she could confirm that she wasn't dreaming. Oh, home; never again would she take 1997 Japan for granted. It certainly beat this era, even if it was louder.

She turned back to the small group behind her, a smile spreading across her features as she sat on the lip of the well. Rin and Jaken looked at her in question, Rin due to her lack of prior knowledge of their destination, and Jaken probably because of her smile. Even the dragon shifted its heads curiously. Only Sesshomaru remained impassive, though it didn't phase her. Somewhere in there he probably had questions, but it didn't matter. She was going home.

"Thank you so much," she said with a tone equally grateful as she bowed at the waist. "I wish I had some way to repay you for this."

"There's no need," he replied indifferently.

She shrugged minutely, retaining her smile.

"Take care of yourself, then."

Before she knew it, the words had escaped her lips. She had meant to refine that thought down to a simple repetition of her thanks, but somehow the sentence had bypassed that filter. Quickly she sung her legs over the side of the well, peering down into it to find that there were no bones as there had been before. So 'Bone Eater's Well' really was a befitting name.

"Though I suppose I don't have to tell you that," she added on a quieter note. No, that should have been goodbye. Why did the thoughts she didn't intend to voice come out now, of all times? Was it merely because she knew she wouldn't see them again?

"What are you doing?"

She looked back up at the demon whose curiosity was only slightly apparent on his face. Should she tell him the truth about the well? He wouldn't follow behind her, right?

A glance at the blue sky above gave her the okay, and a crooked smile returned to her features.

"You might not believe me," she started, closing her eyes as she imagined her own time, "but I'm actually from the future. A full five hundred years ahead of this time, or so the old man said."

Sesshomaru narrowed his eyes in speculation. Five hundred years? That would be as far in the future as he was old!

"This well somehow connects our times together, and my curiosity got the better of me, so I jumped down it, and ended up here," she continued.

He found it hard to believe, naturally, though it might explain her mannerisms and the clothing she was dressed in, along with the items she possessed. Come to think of it, Inuyasha's woman was similar in that respect. Was this why?

"You should ask your brother about it sometime," she added with a soft smile to indicate that she wasn't trying to offend him with her choice of words. "I met him on the other side of this well, after all."

His eyes widened enough to be noticeable at that statement. What would his brother have seen in this so-called future beyond the well?

"But it's time I went home," she concluded, training her gaze on space below her dangling feet. "Thanks again for getting me here safely. I pretty much owe you my life, so if I come up with a way to repay you, I'll see about getting that girl that was with Inuyasha to help out somehow. You, too, Rin," she added, before glancing down at Jaken. "And I suppose you, too, Jaken, even if you did hit me."

"What do you mean 'and I suppose you, too?'!" he shouted, but she didn't give him anything more than a slight shake of her head.

Her gaze drifted once more back to Sesshomaru.

"Goodbye."

He nor anyone else got a chance to respond , because she immediately propelled her whole body into the well with a sharp kick of her legs. Sesshomaru blinked as a course of power suddenly radiated out of the well, obscuring her scent behind it until he could no longer detect it save for what lingered in the air where she had been.

It took him a moment to realize that he had been wrong about his first conclusion; he was still overly interested in what the woman was, where she had come from. Distance should have ended that, and a distance across the spans of time should have been far more than enough, he thought, but no. There was still an unnatural pull on his conscience to learn more, and while it should be unnerving, he also found he far too easily accepted it.

A familiar energy pulsed from the well in the next moment, causing him to approach to inspect it. A soft sound echoed from it, as though something had hit the bottom lightly.

Then something entirely different echoed from its depths.

"…The hell?"

* * *

><p><strong>Sorcerousfang: Hey, I didn't do too bad this time! A month is pretty good for once.<strong>

**Sesshomaru: It's only because you were on your winter break that you got it done, you know. Don't pat yourself on the back when it was so easy.**

**Sorcerousfang: Oh, meh. At least I've made people happy.**

**And wow, I hit just over twenty pages this time. And here I thought I wouldn't end up doing that again. Don't expect it as a habit, though. I'm about to head off to my next semester, and that's going to have an actual course load worthy of seventeen credit hours. That's right. **_**Seventeen.**_** Totally unintentional, but I need the classes so I can keep up with my career choice. And Taiko. Just can't give up those drums.**

**This also means my next update will be a while, or at least until I get used to my schedule again. College is still a weird thing to get used to.**

**So anywho, hope you enjoyed the chapter. A lot of stuff is actually happening in this chapter, and I don't want to give anything away right now, but it's definitely not what you're thinking. Just keep in mind that I have explanations for just about everything in here, including how Sesshomaru is acting. But you won't hear anything else about it until we get closer to the end of the story.**

**Anyone is welcome to guess along the way, however.**

**Until next time!**

**-Sorcerousfang**


	4. You Probably Should Have Listened

**Disclaimer: …Last I checked, I'm still not making any money by procrastinating on writing this.**

**Sorcerousfang: Yippie for a few reviews! Warms my heart every time, my readers.**

**Sesshomaru: Not to mention puts you in a strange, giddy state a drunkard couldn't match.**

**Sorcerousfang: Hey! I wasn't **_**that **_**weird…**

**Sesshomaru: I beg to differ.**

**Sorcerousfang: …Ignore him. He's become delusional from being in here for too long.**

**Sesshomaru: Hey!**

**Sorcerosfang: Anyway, so here I am sitting in Psychology 1010 at 8:30 in the morning, and I'm bored because we haven't yet started. So I'm getting my butt in gear and starting this next chapter. No hopes for how soon it gets out, but maybe I'll stick with the long chapters.**

**Wednesday, January 11****th****. Time to roll!**

* * *

><p>Despair and confusion wove it's way into the words that echoed clear from the bottom of the well, and when Sesshomaru peered over it's edge, he found the strange girl who supposedly was going home kneeling there, instead of the empty expanse it should have been.<p>

She was holding the necklace that had been around her neck in her hand now, the knuckles of both hands turning white and shoulders trembling with the effort behind the grip she had on the offending artifact and the soil beneath her. It was apparent to him that something had gone unexpectedly wrong in her attempt to return home, and that thought was sealed when she slowly turned her face up to him. With wide, blue eyes, she trembled as a mix of anger and fear raced through her features.

"It won't…let me go," she said in a quiet voice full of disbelief.

Several seconds passed where neither of them said or did anything before her expression gave way to an angry scowl. Surprised for a moment by her change in emotion, Sesshomaru merely watched as she jumped experimentally. Rin and Jaken joined him a moment later, and a flash of silver caught his eye when he glanced at his wards. His hand snapped out on reflex, but when he felt the object give way in his passing hand, he quickly grasped at it before it fell away from him. The necklace glinted sharply back at him, and he realized she'd discarded it in a clever attempt to find a way around her predicament.

She had climbed part way up the side of the well before a stretch of her left arm gave way to pain coursing down it, and with a yelp of surprise, she relinquished her hold on the tangled vines and fell right back down. This time Sesshomaru felt the power radiate from the well for a moment, and a blue glow made it appear as if it would work after all. However, a different power suddenly radiated from the object in his hand, consuming the flow from the well before dying out again.

"Damn it!" she hollered out in frustration. "I should really learn to listen to people!"

She kicked the dirt wall, sending some of it flying, though she recoiled in regret a second later.

"Miss Mizuki…" Rin said with concern, apparently realizing that, while the girl was glaring hard at the wall of dirt and clutching her throbbing arm in anger, the tears rolling down her face betrayed the feelings she was desperately trying to hide.

"…You cannot return to your proper time," Sesshomaru observed.

"Apparently not," she replied bitterly.

Finding her anger dissolving away suddenly, Mizuki felt weak. She was stuck in feudal Japan right now, with no way of getting back. The probability of being able to return should have been very high, especially since she had gotten through. Sesshomaru even more or less confirmed that Inuyasha could travel between the times, so it should have been able to bring her back through as it did him.

It was the necklace that she hadn't accounted for. That single variable had thrown everything off in her theory, and now she was paying the consequences for her assumptions.

For whatever reason, it was preventing her from returning home. When she'd jumped the first time trying to return, she had heard the song give way to the persistent yelling that had ceased when she had retrieved the necklace. It was clear, then, that when the soft aura of the well had surrounded her, the necklace had resisted it. She didn't know how or why, but because of the thing, she couldn't return.

She couldn't go home.

"Mizuki."

Her head shot up as she was forced out of her thoughts by the voice that came to her. She gritted her teeth and wiped madly at the tears rolling down her face, until a hand extended down to her. Oblivious to the strangeness of the gesture coming from the demon, Mizuki reached out her right hand until he could get a grip around her wrist. Quickly and easily, she was lifted out of the dry well.

The weakness that had come over her suddenly collected in her legs when her feet touched the ground, and they promptly collapsed beneath her. Rin rushed up to her side, asking if she was alright as she took hold of the hand that Sesshomaru had released. They watched her carefully as she seemed to lose herself first in thought, then in tears. Wiping at them as if to erase every trace of their existence, she gritted her teeth against the sobs that escaped against her will.

"What am I supposed to do?" she questioned in a voice shadowed by fear. "I can't survive here…I don't know the first thing about this place. I can't fight off demons…or cook, or…or…my god, I can't believe…"

Her words gave way to sobs that shook her body, and she reached out to cling to the first thing she could get her arms around, which happened to be Rin. Though slightly unbalanced by the force behind her grip, the young child tried to comfort her as best she could.

"I don't know what to do!" she cried into the girl's yukata. "This wasn't…wasn't supposed to happen!"

"It'll be alright, Miss Mizuki," Rin said confidently. "We'll figure something out. You'll see!"

Sesshomaru watched silently for a moment longer. Dealing with emotional humans wasn't something he would ever claim to be proficient in, and he'd just as soon let Rin handle the situation alone, as she was far more empathetic than either he or Jaken. The imp himself looked uneasy, as though bothered but unsure what to do. There wasn't much a demon could provide under such circumstances.

That wasn't to say he didn't wish to know how to make her stop. It wasn't out of a sense of caring, and not merely because the salty scent and sounds that came from her were annoying. Her crying gave him the sickening sense that he would no longer be able to find anything in her, information or otherwise. His curiosity hadn't waned, and with the new knowledge he now had about her origins, there were countless more questions to be had.

A thought occurred to him then, bringing him back to why she couldn't return the way she had attempted to; the necklace. He removed it from the hilt of one of his swords, where he had set it aside to retrieve her from the well. Now it reflected dully back at him in his hand as he contemplated her options, as well as his own.

When he knelt down beside her and Rin, the only one who registered any surprise was Jaken. Rin gathered the attention of the worn woman so she would acknowledge him, and she looked up at him before quickly shoving away the lingering tears with the heel of her hand.

"Do you know of this artifact's origins?" he questioned.

Mizuki stared at him for a moment as she pieced together his inquiry around what had just happened. Sniffling to hide her runny nose, she finally shook her head.

"If you trace it back to its source, you might find a way to return to your proper time," he continued. "In turn, you may also discover its purpose, and perhaps be able to defend yourself."

There was a light returning to her eyes that he hadn't noticed was gone until now, and she took another swipe at the tears collecting there before they could fall.

"You think?" she questioned, a small hint of confidence returning to her tone.

"It's simply theory," he said bluntly, "but it's a start."

She nodded, looking back at the ground for a moment before going on.

"…The Higurashi shrine had some details about it," she said thoughtfully.

"Higurashi?" he questioned. The name was unfamiliar to him.

She nodded.

"But the shrine stands here in the future, not now. Maybe if I could talk to the girl again…but they could still be in the future, for all I know."

"…If you are referring to Inuyasha and his companion, they've returned."

She gave him a questioning look.

"Their scents are here," he answered her unspoken thoughts. "Judging by that, they returned late yesterday morning."

Mizuki blinked, and suddenly more pieces started to fall into place. Dog ears, Inuyasha's name, they were half-brothers…

"…Good nose," she commented. Funny…he didn't _look_ anythinglike a dog. But then again, she didn't know anything about demons, did she?

Sesshomaru didn't reply, so she didn't press the matter.

There was a short moment where it appeared that he was thinking, and when he stood back up, Mizuki suddenly realized how much had just occurred in that short span of time. A man of great status (or so she assumed, given the reverence with which Jaken and Rin paid him), had offered her his hand, had bothered to come down to her height instead of addressing her from above, and had, in a roundabout way, comforted her. Those actions, if she remembered her etiquette well enough, should have been far beneath someone of his station, and that wasn't even addressing the fact that he was a demon on top of it all.

Perhaps he had picked up some ideas because Rin was around, and maybe the girl's presence was all it really was, but Mizuki found herself feeling far more humbled than she would have been had Sesshomaru simply been a normal man.

"You should go to her for this information, then," Sesshomaru continued, staring off to his right. "There is a village right outside of this forest. You will find the woman there."

She stared blankly at him. He didn't mean that he was no longer going to help her, right?

"…I don't know," she stared warily. "I mean, I know I need to see that girl again, but…"

His gaze drifted back to her, and she felt herself beginning to lose her nerve once again.

"…But Inuyasha…I don't think he likes me very much," she finished. "We didn't exactly start off on the right foot."

Irony might have been a cause for laughter, if the situation weren't what it was. While amusing, the fact that the hanyou already didn't trust her was going to make double the mistrust he would view her with given whose scent she would have among her own. It wasn't exactly a favorable situation.

This would mark one of the very few instances when the demon pondered the way things might have been had the two ever seen eye to eye.

"I'm want to avoid approaching him," he stated, sounding as though he were distracted by a thought. He then raised an eyebrow before sending her a strange look.

"…What?" she questioned when he didn't explain.

"Nothing of great importance," he assured her. "I just suddenly found it amusing that you seem to fear a hanyou more than you do myself."

Her face reddened in embarrassment, and she _knew_ that was exactly what he was aiming for, because he had the same look in his eye as he did when he made that comment about observing humans.

"That has nothing to do with it, and you know it!" she accused, her words coming out more forcefully than she meant. "The moment I met him, he wanted to take me out, and would have if it weren't for that girl. You, however, never seemed to entertain the thought; who do you _think _I'm going to trust?"

Sesshomaru found his amusement broken by her words. 'Trust' certainly wasn't something one found in someone they'd known for less than a day, but she had said the word so forcefully that he felt the need to acknowledge it.

Mizuki, one the other hand, was thinking of something entirely different. He had called Inuyasha a _hanyou_, and that made her wonder if that might be where his dislike of his sibling might stem from.

"_He hadn't looked like a demon…" _she thought. _"Not until I thought about the ears. Half demon…so is he half human, too?"_

Fond of Rin, perhaps, but if their conversations were anything to go by, not so fond of humans in general, which made the way he was dealing with her questionable…

"…If something should go wrong," Sesshomaru started, staring off into the forest again, "just shout."

Mizuki stared at him. Make that _very _questionable.

"I will be able to hear you."

In other words, he would rescue her.

Mizuki had never quite thought about the whole concept of a 'knight in shining armor,' nor had she ever imagined the ridiculous English romance novel cliché having anything to do with real life. But standing there in the sunlight like that, Sesshomaru, this demon who shouldn't want anything to do with her, looked as though he were just that. She should be laughing about that, but the reality of it was so strange that the notion of her mind playing tricks on her didn't register very quickly.

"Besides," he continued, turning back to her again, "foul as he may come across, Inuyasha seems to make a point of not killing humans, and he and the girl rarely part from each other. You have no need to worry."

"…Alright," she nodded, shaking her earlier thoughts from her head. She had no intentions of letting her mind wander in that direction, and the idea was wholly unexpected. Riho's romance ideals must have been rubbing off on her without her realizing it.

Attempting the use of her legs once again, Mizuki found that they were back to being capable of supporting her weight. Sesshomaru must have noticed as well, because he motioned for her to follow him. She did so, letting him guide her away from the well and through a patch of trees until he stopped.

"He cannot sense me at the moment, due to the wind's direction," he said with a small toss of his head to his right. She peered through the trees, realizing he had indicated that she should, and saw the rice fields and small houses of a village. A true houses-built-like-huts, horse-drawn-carriages village.

Her attention was drawn almost immediately to the point he was actually referring to; the blot of red moving through the rice fields and lugging back a couple of thick tree trunks. She swallowed hard, imagining the strength one needed to pull that off. Right there was Inuyasha, and unfortunately, he was alone.

"Wait by that tree down there for him to return," he told her, indicating the large one standing lone by a pile of other trunks. "It would be safer than entering the village unannounced, at least. You can hide, if you so desire."

She gave him a nervous glance, which he apparently caught, because his next words were in response to that.

"I will watch from here," he said dispassionately. "You are in no danger."

Coming from him, those words were strange, and he was acutely aware of that fact. This offer of protection, however, was not without its ulterior motives. Distance. That's what he was aiming for, and if watching from afar would drive her to go, then so be it.

"…Alright," she finally conceded, nodding sharply more to herself than to him. "If…if things go well…I'll come back here again, no later than this evening, so I can let you know what I find out." He nodded in agreement. As much as he wanted to create some distance between himself and her, he wasn't planning on leaving her here right after this parting. He still had questions he wanted answers to, after all. That settled, he held out the necklace to her. She stared at it for a moment before looking at him.

"…You really don't want it for payment?" she questioned.

"I told you, I have no use for it," he replied, gesturing for her to take it. "And since it appears that this is preventing you from returning home, it is likely that it is meant to be in your hands."

Mizuki cupped her hands beneath it, allowing him to release it into them. She seemed to contemplate it for a moment before bringing it protectively to her chest. Apparently she had just realized her familiarity with the object and it's own connection to her, because she smiled warmly in spite of being willing to give it up so easily.

"Thank you, Sesshomaru," she said as she placed the necklace back around her neck and tucked it away beneath the collar of her shirt. "You've done much more than I could have asked for."

He knew that, which was precisely why he needed to enact his little experiment, and _now._

"You should go before he begins to head back," he urged. "He'll see you coming, otherwise."

Her eyes widened a little, and she nodded quickly, paying no mind to his deft change of subject. She turned toward the trees and paused for a moment to look back at him, but seemed to think better of it, and took off towards the village.

As he watched her go, he tried to focus. Just why was he doing this? It was the same sort of question he had asked himself when he had taken Rin into his care, but it held a different weight to it. He began to feel his interests wane in pace with her departure, until he felt he had control once again over his own curiosity. Why was he curious about a human's predicament at all? It was beneath him, hardly a subject of great importance, and though he had realized that at some point before, it wasn't until now that he began to fully grasp it.

His eyes narrowed in scrutiny.

./-/-/-/-/-/.

Confidence certainly seemed to be a fickle thing for her. She could be given it by words, it could be robbed of her by eyes, and apparently all of it ran away when she was hiding from what could be the one to lead her to all of her answers.

Mizuki heaved a nervous sigh as she leaned against the tree. Sure she had tried to make it look like she wasn't actually scared of the guy, but the sad truth of it all was that she was darned certain that he had reflexively reached for a _sword_ when they had first met, and the thought that he probably had it on him now terrified her.

And this time the girl wasn't there to prevent him from using it.

Granted, Sesshomaru was supposed to be watching just for that reason, but even that comfort raised questions. He'd had yet to do something for her simply out of kindness; of that, she was acutely aware. At first she had thought that his leading her to the well was for her, but the more she had thought about it, the more she started to believe he had some ulterior motive. And now? She felt more like he was trying to get rid of her for his own devices, kind of like how she got the impression before that he had helped her for Rin's sake rather than as thanks. The way he seemed to think led her to believe that she hadn't seen the last of him (though just to be safe she had thrown in that she would come back as soon as she could), so she was confident that he wasn't just going to take off once she made contact with Inuyasha. It still bugged her, though, that she wasn't exactly sure _why_.

Okay, so she probably had caused him far more trouble than amusement, but she was pretty sure that wasn't his reason.

And she wouldn't deny that, whether for his own devices or for her sake, he was helping her. Whatever his motives may be, in the end, what mattered was that she was getting somewhere, and that he was providing that assistance.

"_And probably laughing his ass off because of I'm afraid of his little brother,"_ she thought bitterly. Not laughing in the literal sense, of course. Somehow she couldn't imagine him rolling with laughter. A cocky smile was about the best she'd probably see of him being amused.

She was about to shoot a look back to where the demon was supposed to be watching, but footsteps interrupted her. The fear that had dwindled away as she had thought about her current situation with the man in white rushed back with twice the force it had originally had, and she could see from around the tree that Inuyasha was about ten feet from her, and he was aware that something was different.

"Who's there?" he called accusingly, placing a hand on the hilt of the sword now by his side. "Come out now if you know what's good for you!"

She swallowed hard, back now to the trunk that was her protection, staring intently at the trees she had left behind. She couldn't see Sesshomaru there, but she figured he could see her nonetheless. Little comfort when ten feet from her was someone that could probably kill her if he wanted to.

"…_foul as he may come across, Inuyasha seems to make a point of not killing humans."_

Placing her life on those words, she formed her own.

"Um…" she started uncertainly, "Please…don't hurt me, okay?"

Perhaps confused by the timid reply he received, he didn't draw his sword, and took a moment to respond.

"Depends what your business is here and who you are," he finally said forcefully.

Slowly she stepped out from behind the tree, keeping one hand to it as if to keep herself rooted. Her free hand was shaking terribly, showing the fear she wanted to hide so desperately from sight. She clenched it tightly, and looked up into the eyes of the hanyou.

"You…?" he started questioningly. "You're the girl from the shrine!"

She tried a smile, but it came out awkwardly as she replied, "Yeah…that's me. You're Inuyasha, right?"

He nodded cautiously, once again confused by her presence. Then something seemed to click, and he sprang to life once again with a new fire.

"How did you get here?" he demanded before taking a curious whiff of the air between them. His face grew angry suddenly, making her eyes widen as fear gripped her again. "And you stink of that bastard Sesshomaru! What, did he send you thinking I'd let my guard down on a girl?!"

"No, wait," Mizuki pleaded as she took a couple of steps back behind the tree. Sesshomaru hadn't been kidding when he said they didn't get along; the look in Inuyasha's eyes confirmed that. "He told me you might be able to help."

"Me? Help him?" he scoffed. Apparently the idea was laughable.

"Not _him_," she replied quickly. "_Me_."

He still didn't seem to trust her in any way, if his glare was any indication. But there was a curiousness she found there as well that sparked a little hope in her heart.

"…Was that your light-thing, then? At the bottom of the well?" he asked after a moment.

"…Light-thing?"

"You know!" he urged in a moment of frustration. "Those things Kagome has that light up without fire."

It took her a moment to realize what he was referring to. So _that's_ where it had disappeared to. She had completely forgotten.

"You mean my flashlight?" she asked with a little amusement. Of course he wouldn't know what a flashlight was; they didn't have any sort of electricity here, let alone batteries.

"Yeah, that thing. We found it in the well before we came back," he explained before he took on a questioning look. "Only Kagome and I can travel through the well. How'd someone like you get through?"

She ignored how rude that sounded in favor of revealing the necklace from beneath her shirt collar. His eyes widened in recognition.

"I think this let me through," she said quietly. "It kept calling out to me…so much that I came back that evening to ask about it. I'm…ashamed to say I stole it from the shrine, but it just wouldn't quiet down until I had it in my hand. Then it urged me to the well, and I just jumped. I figured I could get back; I saw your ears back at the shrine, connected a few dots, and decided it was safe to try it…" She took a long breath for a moment, trying to hold back the emotions coming back to remind her she was trapped here. "…I didn't account for the necklace, though. I can't get back. We tried, but…I'm stuck here."

Inuyasha raised an eyebrow at her last sentence, but seemed to take her words as truth. If not her words…well, it was pretty obvious that she wasn't exactly comfortable where she was.

"Granny Kaede might be able to help," he said finally, turning away from her. "Follow me."

Mizuki's face brightened about ten degrees until he spoke again.

"But there's gonna be a lot of questions, you got it?"

She nodded half-heartedly before she realized he couldn't see her, and flinched when he repeated it roughly.

"Loud and clear," she finally answered. Satisfied, he led her off.

She glanced back over her shoulder once more towards the trees where Sesshomaru was supposed to be watching, and actually glimpsed a small patch of white in the leaves. She mouthed the words 'thank you,' and turned away to follow the hanyou.

Seven minutes of whispers, stares, and other generally unwanted attention later, and Inuyasha had led her to a hut situated at the bottom of a number of stairs, presumably leading up to a shrine. Mizuki's heart pounded uncertainly as she realized she was about to face a girl whose family she had stolen from, who happened to have the power to subdue Inuyasha, and if he was at least half the strength of his half-brother then…

Swallowing thickly as an image of the demon who had chased her into Sesshomaru's path passed through her mind, she shuddered.

Man, she was in _loads _of trouble.

"Hey, Kagome!" Inuyasha called into the hut as he entered. Mizuki waited outside of the thatched screen as thoughts raced through her mind. She really wished Sesshomaru had come with her right now.

"What's wrong now, Inuyasha?" was the reply he received.

"We've got a situation."

Upon realizing that she hadn't followed him inside, his hand shot out and grabbed her arm roughly to drag her in with him. Unfortunately for her, his hand found purchase right around the wound Rin had bandaged as well as she could the night before, and she couldn't prevent the yelp that issued from her lips.

"Somehow this girl got-" he started before he realized the girl in his grip was in distress.

"It hurts!" she cried, trying to bite back the pain. "My arm, please, let go!"

Eyes wide, he released her immediately, whereupon she crumbled to the ground as she clutched the reopened wound.

If there had been any initial shock to her presence, the girl, Kagome, didn't show it. Faster than Mizuki could blink, Kagome was at her side, trying to see the damage to her arm.

"Inuyasha! You should have been more careful!" she reprimanded over her shoulder.

"Hey!" he hollered back defensively. "How was I supposed to know she was hurt, huh? S'not like she told me or anything!"

Ignoring his argument, she turned her attention to their guest. "Come on, we'll get this looked at. Then we can ask questions, alright?"

Mizuki could only nod as the pain dulled and her anxiety returned in its place.

Kagome handed her off to a young woman she introduced as Sango, asking her to remove the old bandage while she got new ones from her bag. After a quick glance of bewilderment at her appearance, the woman smiled.

"Not to worry," she said as she situated her on the floor. "Kagome has good medicine for wounds."

No one asked her any questions until Sango had removed the fabric carefully from her arm and had cleaned the wound more thoroughly with some of the supplies Kagome had provided her with. The one who started the questioning came in the form of a small child, and was just that until Mizuki really took in his appearance. With big green eyes and a mop of orange-brown hair, the little boy stared up at her nervously from Kagome's side, until he moved enough that she realized he had a bushy tail and his feet looked more like the paws of a fox.

"You're from Kagome's homeland, aren't you?" he asked suspiciously, eyeing her clothing and taking curious whiffs of the air.

"…Yeah," she answered nervously, more worried about the reaction of the girl beside her than that of the small child.

Other questions of the sort were held off for the moment, because three more faces entered the hut rather quickly; that of what looked to be a monk, an older woman Mizuki assumed to be the 'Granny Kaede' Inuyasha had mentioned, and an adorable cat, whose red eyes and twin tails gave away it's true nature.

"Ay, it seems what the villagers said is true," Kaede mused. "Inuyasha brought in a strange girl in clothing much like Lady Kagome's"

Mizuki glanced at the girl's clothing out of curiosity, and came to the conclusion that she must have worn something similar to her current clothing some other time before, because right now Kagome was in a middle school uniform that seemed highly impractical in this time.

"Who is she?" the monk asked out of what seemed like curiosity, coming up to her for a closer look. For a moment, she felt a little angry that they seemed to be talking as if she wasn't around to hear, but batted that issue away. She was supposed to find help, maybe answers here; she couldn't make the situation worse.

"We would have gotten to that," Sango started in a pointed tone, which Kagome seemed to pick up on very quickly.

"Except that Inuyasha ended up hurting her because he wasn't paying attention," she finished.

"I didn't mean to!" he retorted. "And you're making it look like I'm the one who hurt her in the first place!"

"How did you get that wound, anyway, Miss?" the boy asked before Kagome could reply to Inuyasha. Reminded suddenly of Rin, Mizuki almost smiled, but shook her head. He'd probably wonder what she was smiling about in this situation.

"It's a long story," she answered.

"Well, we've got the time," Kagome started. "Why don't we start off with some introductions…?"

She nodded shyly.

Kagome introduced everyone in turn, starting with Inuyasha, and working her way around the hut. She included some explanation as to why the boy looked the way he did, the cat having two tails, and even why Inuyasha had ears, assuming that she wouldn't have understood otherwise, and professions were included as well, giving her a well-rounded idea of just who she was among (and reminding her how many could kill her, in a backwards sense). She tried to commit to it all to memory; Miroku the monk, Shippo the young fox, and Kirara the demon cat, companion of Sango the demon slayer (something she found odd, but didn't question), Lady Kaede the village priestess, and of course Inuyasha and herself.

"My own story is a little complicated itself, but since you're here, I can at least tell you that I've been traveling back and forth between our present and this time for a while now, and I'm somewhat of a priestess myself," she concluded. "I remember you from your class trip two days ago, but we didn't exchange names then, so…"

"Right," she answered, staring down at the place she knew the necklace rested on her chest. "My name is Mizuki Kurahashi," she started. "You…remember that necklace, right? The one in the package that kind of disintegrated after I caught it?"

"Yes," she answered thoughtfully, and looked at her neck out of curiosity. She was somehow surprised to see it there even though she had expected it now that she realized what the girl was implying, and the small gasp she let out made her dab a little to harshly at the wound she had been tending to. Mizuki hissed in pain, and she apologized quickly.

"It's alright," she replied with a small smile. "Just not accustomed to pain."

"Believe me, I know the feeling," Kagome relayed. "So how'd you get the necklace, anyway? Grandpa sealed it up again after your class left."

"She _stole_ it," Inuyasha chimed in, glaring daggers at her from across the room.

"Inuyasha, _sit_," she commanded, and just like before, he was dragged forcefully to the ground, face-first. This time, Mizuki realized just how much it had to hurt as the ground shook beneath her. "You're not helping anything."

Feeling a little bad for him, Mizuki uttered, "No, he's right." That drew some stares (especially as she withdrew the necklace from under her collar), and a demand for an apology from the wounded hanyou, which wasn't met.

Eyes never quite meeting the younger girl's, Mizuki began her tale, explaining that she had fully intended to come with questions about it that night, only to end up annoyed by the persistence of the song from it, and subsequently drawn to the well. How or why no one noticed her, especially Inuyasha, whose sharp senses should have picked up on her, she didn't know, but that's how she ended up here.

Eyes slightly wide, but not reflecting anger, Kagome seemed to contemplate her story for a few moments.

"It seems the necklace ye now bare is resonating with ye," Lady Kaede observed, looking her over thoughtfully. "Might it be that it somehow belongs with her, Kagome?"

"That's what I was thinking," she answered. "It wouldn't be the first time something from another family ended up at the shrine. I wouldn't be surprised if it was picked it up from the well, actually."

This caught Mizuki's attention. What was it that the old man had said about it when they were there?

"_I myself found it here nearly twenty years ago."_

Right, that was it. She had singled out the object when they were observing artifacts, and when her grandfather had started in about her eyes being blue, he pointed out the well house, stating that he found it there.

"…Your grandfather said something about finding it in the well himself, actually," she told her, then relayed what she could remember of that whole explanation.

The young priestess' eyebrows rose at her recounting of the events two days ago, despite Mizuki herself admitting that with everything that had happened, she may have forgotten a few things.

"I do sense some sort of power from it," Miroku added, leaning in for a closer look. Mizuki was starting to feel a definite lack of personal space, and was just as uncomfortable when the monk took her right hand in his own without warning. "Miss Mizuki," he continued, "might I ask you to do the honor of bearing my child?"

…Say what?

Before she had a chance to sort out _how _exactly the conversation had gone from the necklace to an apparent marriage proposal, Sango whipped around and gave him a sound _klonk_ on the head, leaving him smiling as though he were reminiscing, and the demon slayer smoldering. A bright blush finally consumed Mizuki's face as she realized what had just happened.

"You pervert!" Sango reprimanded him. "This is hardly the time or place for that!"

"Oh, my dear Sango. I just couldn't help myself. All of a sudden it just came over me," he explained without exasperation.

"I'm surprised it took him this long," Shippo said with a roll of his eyes.

"…You mean he does this all the time?" Mizuki questioned, bewildered.

"He did it to me, too, shortly after we met. It's about the extent of his lecherous habits, though," Kagome sighed. "Unless you're Sango."

The demon slayer harrumphed and sat back down next to Kagome as she tightly wound a strip of medical wrap around the wound she had finished tending to. There was an uncomfortable silence for a few moments, until Kagome pinned the wrap together securely, and gave a solid pat to her shoulder.

"All finished," she concluded, closing the tin first aid kit with a snap. "You might end up with a scar, though. It isn't exactly a shallow wound."

She nodded, expecting that. Stitches weren't exactly an option at this point, considering she couldn't get home, and though Kagome seemed very capable when it came to medical emergencies, she wasn't about to let her put a needle in her.

"So, Mizuki…" Sango started, giving her a questioning look. "Have you been in this era for the past two days, then?"

She nodded.

"Amazing," Miroku commented, having recovered from his earlier escapades. "The fact that you were here on your own and only have one major wound is impressive."

Inuyasha snorted. "Oh, she wasn't alone," he commented sourly. "She was with _him_ for at _least_ the past day, considering how much she reeks of the bastard."

"'Him?'" everyone questioned in unison, glancing between the two of them as they wondered what knowledge they had withheld from the rest of them.

"…I can see why he wanted to avoid approaching you," she said quietly.

"Keh," Inuyasha scoffed. "That's the first I've ever heard of him trying to avoid a fight. You sure it wasn't for him that he sent you to get help? 'Cause it sounds to me like something's wrong in his head."

"Wait," Shippo interrupted as he sniffed the air more carefully. Apparently his nose wasn't nearly as good as Inuyasha's, but after a moment, his eyes widened in recognition. "You were with Sesshomaru?"

Various sounds of disbelief echoed around her, and Mizuki found herself very confused. While she realized he and Inuyasha didn't get along, and subsequently probably didn't get along with the rest of the group, she didn't think what had transpired between the two of them would elicit such a response. Sure, he wasn't exactly nice and helpful, but he wasn't mean, either. And they had to have known about Rin, right?

Obviously they had a very different take on the man.

"He kinda saved my life from the thing that did this to my arm," she explained. "Only as a result of saving Rin, really, but saved I was, and…well, here I am."

There were some disbelieving stares among the others, minus Inuyasha who refused to look at her, and Kagome who had closed her eyes in thought. Slightly annoyed by this, she frowned, and asked a relatively obvious question.

"Is it really that hard to believe?"

"Yes," was the immediate response from just about everyone in the house. When she frowned in annoyance at the lack of a reason, Inuyasha chose to elaborate.

"Sesshomaru thinks of humans on the same level as _insects_. He's not exactly _nice_ to anyone. The fact that he even led you here is probably a miracle, and that's not even mentioning that you were with him for as long as you were. We're talking about a guy who shoved his hand through my gut and left me to die, played dress-up with a bunch of replacement arms, can't get over the fact that I got our old man's good sword, _and_ won't leave my prey alone!"

Trying to piece together Inuyasha's claims and coming up with zero based on her own experiences, Mizuki just pursed her lips. That was a totally different portrait of the man whose actions, however he'd meant for them to be taken, she had begun to truly appreciate. No, Sesshomaru wasn't exactly nice, but he didn't look at her like she was some kind of lesser being. Jaken had tried to do that, but not him. He'd underhandedly made fun of her, sure, but she never felt like she was an _insect _to him.

"I think that's exaggerating a little, Inuyasha," Kagome said uncertainly before turning to her. "But he's not exactly lying, either. Sesshomaru…well, he's not our enemy, but he's not exactly an ally, either. Don't get me wrong; I believe you. It's just really unusual."

Well, that gave her something to think about.

"How exactly did ye end up with Sesshomaru, child?" Lady Kaede asked, shifting the ashes in the pit in the center of the hut in thought. "Ye mentioned he rescued ye while saving the young child Rin, but as far as I know, Sesshomaru keeps his distance from human villages."

Eyes turned curiously to her, now, Mizuki felt herself flush with the attention.

"W-well, he wasn't really all that close when I ran into him…" she explained quietly. "I kinda sorta have a really bad sense of direction…"

"Oh," Kagome uttered quietly.

"So you got lost," Inuyasha snickered.

"Well, it isn't like there were any signs around," she shot back. "Besides, when I got here everything was dark. I just wandered around for a little while…"

From there she relayed the entirety of the events she had experienced in the last two days, from the moment the first demon slid around the tree up until she had tried to get home. She paused then, realizing she had completely forgotten the whole reason she was here in the first place, and when renewed tears filled her eyes she tried her hardest to fight them back. She was failing miserably.

"You mean you can't get back?" Kagome questioned as she offered her a tissue.

Mizuki shook her head. "It won't let me through," she said quietly, indicating the pendant around her neck. "I tried everything, even throwing it away, but it keeps pushing me back and yelling at me like it was when it was in the shrine. I don't understand…"

"So he turned you in our direction, thinking we'd be able to help," Kagome concluded. "I can't quite tell if he was being nice, or if he was just dumping you on us, but-"

"No!" Mizuki suddenly argued. "He wasn't just dumping me off!"

There was silence for a moment, making her realize she was unsure about that herself.

"…I mean, he wasn't like that at all," she continued uncertainly. "He wasn't really _nice, _but he wasn't mean or anything like that. Maybe he didn't really help me for my sake, but the fact is, he still helped me. And he didn't just leave me here; he told me I should find out the information I need from you, and I'm supposed to go back and let him know what I _do _find out no later than tonight."

There were a few raised eyebrows as she explained, making her even less comfortable than before. They really didn't believe her, and she was starting to get frustrated. Was the way he had treated her really so unusual? And if so, what made him act that way?

"I know it all sounds weird to you guys, but that's really what happened," she said quietly. "Even I felt like he had some other reason to have me come here alone, but he wouldn't have agreed that he would wait if he didn't mean it. I'm sure of that..."

After a long moment, Kagome nodded.

"She's got a point," she started. "I mean, the first time I met him, he used some pretty dirty tricks, but I think he's changed a bit. Wouldn't you say, Inuyasha?"

Yeah…Inuyasha is definitely not the right person to ask anything about when it comes to Sesshomaru…

"What, now you're taking his side?!" he accused. "That asshole's no different than he's ever been, and now you're defending him?!"

"I am not defending him!" Kagome roared right back. "And if he's no different, then how exactly do you explain Rin, huh? You've seen him with her yourself!"

"So, he probably looks at killing a defenseless kid as being under him!"

"Right, because that completely explains why he's saved her how many times!"

"That's - ! …because…" He trailed off, unable to argue that for a moment. "So he keeps her for some reason! That doesn't change a thing!"

"Actually…" Mizuki started, trying to mediate before the girl ended up bringing the house down with another command of 'sit,' "Rin's with him because she wants to be. That's how he explained it, anyway, and from the look the little imp gave him, that seems to be his only explanation for it."

There was another collective stare, prompting her to continue.

"And Rin told me this morning that she was all alone before he saved her. She was really happy about it, and he didn't deny it so…"

"…Well, regardless of whether Sesshomaru has changed or not, it's you we need to be concerned about," Miroku intervened. Everyone nodded; it was time they focused on the problem at hand.

"Right now, you're stuck in this era and the only clue you have it that necklace, right?" Sango continued.

Mizuki simply nodded.

"After what happened with you at the shrine, I looked at the necklace a little bit," Kagome started. "If I remember what I read correctly…"

With everyone finally focused on the issue, Mizuki began to feel some hope for her situation.

* * *

><p><strong>Sorcerousfang: …Soooooooo…It's been exactly six months, fifteen days, thirteen hours, and thirty-nine minutes (not including the time it took to procrastinate about going over this with the fine-toothed comb called oral recitation…which adds, oh…a few weeks…)<strong>

**So much for having the date at the top of the page making me work faster.**

**Sesshomaru: Well, you've left stories longer. You've yet to finish Deep Water.**

**Sorcerousfang: Don't remind me.**

**I feel like I cut this off a little short, but that might be because it's about two or three pages shorter than the last chapter. I hope you don't mind. Hopefully I can pump out the next chapter before school starts again, but that might not be feasible.**

**On another note, I've done a lot of major storyboarding on this, so I know where I'm headed from here.**

**I guess that just leaves a request for reviews. Thanks for reading!**

**-SF**


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